


pour me a drink

by lunchables



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Complete, F/F, it’s an easy transition, kara happens to bartend at a celebrity speakeasy, lena’s a disgraced celebrity with nowhere to go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2020-10-27 20:23:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 277,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20766431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunchables/pseuds/lunchables
Summary: “Nah, you way over-tipped last night. This one’s on the house.”Lena’s shoulders slump in mock exasperation. “Kara, don’t start with me.”“I am absolutely starting with you.”What a smug little shit, Lena thinks. But God is she cute. “You really don’t want to play this game.”"Yeah? Maybe I do.”a celebrity/bartender au





	1. caught up with the fact that life will be dark

Lena starts from scratch.

There’s not really another option for where else to begin, all things considered.

This whole adventure opens with a Google search of open apartments in National City, and after a dizzying stream of results, she taps the search bar and amends it to _ two bedrooms _. She considers single bedroom — it is just her, after all — but something sticky pricks at the back of her throat at the idea, and she decides that it would feel like conceding to her mother’s doubts if she were to live alone in a one bedroom apartment, like giving up. 

So, two it is. She could use a home office anyway, she reasons.

_ Renthop.com _ has a grossly dysfunctional mainframe set up, and there’s something distrustworthy about _ apartments.com _ , so naturally she ends up on _ rent.com _because she supposes that’s where everyone on the west coast goes at some point or another. She taps through these sites as she lays crookedly across the king-sized cloud of a five-star hotel, naked except for the plush, dark red bathrobe tied around her waist. 

She starts putting out a few requests to tour the apartments once she breaks into the minibar’s champagne, and they range from sleek, modern fish tanks with crisp edges and cold floor plans, much like the apartment she left back in Metropolis, to practical urban cabins floating 30 storeys high in the middle of a major urban center, walls lined with cherry-wood pillars, Brazilian floorboards and even a chandelier hand-carved from deer antlers. The latter, she really only drops an offer on so she can actually see it in person, but in the end, she settles for somewhere in the middle. 

It’s two days later and only 68 hours after drafting a letter that she leaves on her mother’s desk that Lena Luthor checks out of the hotel and hails a cab uptown in order to stroke her signature on a few lines of a freshly-printed lease. The apartment she’s chosen is on the northeastern side of National City, close enough to the water that she can see it from her high balcony, only a modest protrusion from her bedroom window. She could fit a compact lounging chair and perhaps a low table for a rocks glass to sit on, but not much else. The apartment itself is fairly new, has all the new wiring and appropriate finishings, but the building and the company running it are old and discreet — exactly the kind of people she’s looking for. The floors are finished with some kind of white oak stain, which does well to maintain relative coolness in the residual summer heat, along with the off-white bare walls and white granite countertops. Everything is just so pale and white and so beautifully unlike the grim darkness of her last apartment, with little room for shadows or wallowing, and everything is so clean that Lena knows there is no room for hiding here.

It occurs to her exactly thirty-five seconds after the realtor has closed the door behind herself, leaving Lena alone in her new apartment, that she hasn’t taken even a moment to consider furniture. 

She barely takes a moment to think about the potential issues that might arise should she actually stroll through the aisles of a Bed, Bath & Beyond, the risks it poses. She chews over the small voice in her head that cautions her against it for about another seventeen seconds before she’s scooping one of the two loose keys off the countertop, slipping it into a zipper in her wallet, and breezing out the door entirely.

xx

Of course, she really should have considered it for much longer. Maybe even a minute of foresight would have saved her plethora of anxiety, the crisp sharp kind, the nail-biting and skin-scratching type where she both desperately has to cry and also couldn’t if she tried.

It starts rather harmlessly. 

Lena’s already been to a Royal Pedic outlet for a king-sized tempurpedic mattress and bedframe that would be delivered and assembled in her bedroom by the time she’s finished shopping, along with a hunter-green Dakota sofa from Havertys for her living room. The rest, she’d reasoned twenty minutes ago, could easily be checked off a shopping list at BB&B. She’s since dismissed the store representative that had taken to following her like a timid shadow throughout the store as Lena worked her way throughout the store with a tablet in hand, checking and adding things to a figurative cart. Honestly, she’s trying to be less _ plush _ about her whole financial situation, unlike the last eight years of her life since she graduated from MIT, but surely she can’t be expected to actually lug a cart around for everything she needs. No, she tried that at a Target for groceries already, and she nearly started hyperventilating in the condiments aisle. 

Alright, maybe she placed an order for a vanity from Gucca Italy, but their product just smells so fresh for _ years _ after the purchase. 

But the rest of her things — she can totally get from here.

This is precisely her downfall.

Lena is stroking a hand over red Egyptian cotton bath towels, wondering if putting an order in for her favorite Turkish cotton towels would be too gaudy of her, when she hears a sharp intake of breath from somewhere beside her.

She only half-registers the sound at first, deep in thought, but is promptly pulled out when:

“Oh, my God, dude, is that Lena Luthor? _ Dude _ are you looking?”

“Bro, quit it, you’re so fucking— wait, what? Where?”

“Dude, right in front of you, oh my God, it so is.”

Grinding her jaw to offset the sudden cold sweat at the nape of her neck, to keep her grounded, Lena nonchalantly untucks her hair from behind her ear so that it falls into her face more, and starts to turn in the opposite direction of the two college-aged boys whispering. She makes it a few good steps away, face tucked down into the tablet to hide her face, but the boy’s voice had already carried and continued to drift in the factory-like open floor plan of the shopping store, and Lena can practically feel people’s gazes start to lift as they notice her.

Lena makes it three aisles away when a middle-aged woman with short, blonde hair and tight skin pulling her thin lips into quivering frown stops her, stepping into Lena’s path.

“Excuse me,” Lena begins, going to side step the woman, but she quickly rushes to stay in front of Lena.

“My boy, he was twelve, you know.”

Lena comes to a hasty stop in the store, a small horde of bystanders already forming around them. She knows, fuck does Lena already know, she always knows how it goes, and so she mentally sucker punches herself for even asking but, “I’m sorry?” 

The woman’s mouth shakes harder, and what had first been a trembling melancholy in her eyes now quickly sharpens to something much darker, something meaner, and Lena always knows how this goes.

“My _ son _,” she spits out like her words are her weapon. “He was twelve and he wanted to be a scientist, he wanted to help people.” The woman tilts her head, eyes flickering over Lena’s face as if searching for something. “He wanted to change the world, and instead you took him from it.”

Lena doesn’t flinch, but her heart hammers all the same as she looks down, her skin taut over her jaw, hands clammy and shaking around the edges of the tablet as she forces her voice to stay level when she says, “Ma’am, I-I didn’t, it wasn’t—”

Lena doesn’t even realize what’s happened, not until the woman is sneering and storming off down the store walkway and something wet and sticky slips down her cheek and Lena hastily wipes it away with her scarf, that it sinks in that the woman just spit on her.

From a practical standpoint, it’s not the worst outcome of these situations, and Lena deflates. There was the father two weeks ago in Metropolis who had to be escorted out of the lobby of LuthorCorp kicking and screaming after he’d lunged at Lena with biting threats and swears to hell. There was the woman 12 days ago in the locker room of her spin class that slapped her across the face and snarled that Lena was pathetic for standing behind a murderer, that she might as well have been one herself, as though she hadn’t very _ publicly _ cooperated with the police and denounced her brother in a nationally broadcasted courtroom. And then there was the protester last week who snuck past security where Lena was visiting Siobhan filming her latest movie, where a complete and total stranger pepper-sprayed Lena and, consequently, everyone else within a ten foot radius. This all led to a two-hour-long argument in Siobhan’s trailer and ended with a bitter, exhausted, “ _ Shit, I just can’t do this anymore, Lena. _”

So, as far as these things go, it hasn’t been the worst one yet, but Lena had figured this was something she’d leave behind in Metropolis, and she still doesn’t know how to deal with them, much less the aftermath. The assembly of people around her all have relatively the same varying expressions on their faces, ranging from sour pity to second-hand humiliation, and a hell of a lot of grimaces.

With hands shaking so bad they feel volatile, Lena manages to hand the tablet back to an employee with an apology, and that she’ll order her things online, before she leaves.

xx

So yeah, she wishes she’d just gotten what she needed online in the first place, because now she was sitting at a rather mediocre bar downtown with a glass of whiskey dangling from her fingertips, feeling completely and miserably sorry for herself.

The bar’s alright, as far as they go, even if Jameson is the nicest whiskey they have and the pool table wedged at the back corner costs three dollars in quarters, and the long length of the narrow bar is rather tight with not much space for lingering about if you don’t have a seat at the bar. But, conveniently for Lena, it’s dark, and it’s loud, and not the kind of place where people look you in the eye too much.

She’s thanking the bartender for her refill when a woman with short, cropped hair hops onto the stool beside her, leaning towards Lena.

Instinctually, she wants to turn away, make it clear she’s not interested even minimally in just a conversation with a stranger, but her chest stutters for a second and she thinks about how she actually met Siobhan in a bar not that different from this one, all those years ago in Boston. Which is how Lena ends up instead turning ever so slightly towards the woman who’s just sat beside her, even goes so far as to offer up a small, languid smile.

“Alright, I gotta know,” the woman opens with, propping her elbow onto the bar and eyeing Lena with the kind of cocky smirk one adopts after a few too many drinks.

She takes the bait. “Know what?”

“How in the hell am I the only person dying to talk to you right now?”

Lena chuckles, runs her tongue along her teeth as she raises an eyebrow. “What makes you think you’re the first?”

The woman laughs, her grin widening, and she leans in closer like she knows this is going well for her, like she knows Lena is lonely enough to keep this up and might even do something recklessly juvenile tonight if she plays her cards right, when something flickers across her eyebrows.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, can’t she just have something?

The woman cocks her head first for a second, like she’s trying to remember something, her eyes dropping over Lena’s features, scanning. But Lena is already reaching into her purse for her wallet, already plucking a twenty-dollar bill and dropping it on the counter, already downing her drink by the time the woman says it:

“Shit, you know you look a lot like that Luthor chick.”

To which, Lena swiftly salutes her fingers, sliding from the barstool. “Have a great rest of your night.”

Jesus, she can’t even stew in a self-deprecating, drunken stupor at a lonely city bar properly. Is it her? Should she be making different moves to disguise herself somehow? Okay, yes, changing her hair color or chopping it off wouldn’t quite as theatrical of a reaction to a breakup as moving across the country, but still — it feels dramatic and tacky, and she’d rather avoid that route if she can.

It’s still not as pathetic, though, as bursting out into the harsh, cold air of the evening with a sob lodged in her throat as she ducks into the nearest alley so she can keel over and really _ cry _. Like, the ugly snot-bubbling-from-her-nose kind of cry, with hiccups and gasps, all over piles of trash that smell like old Kung Pao chicken and shoe polish.

She doesn’t stay there for long, (read: sobbing like a fragile child) and soon she picks herself back up together. Lena rubs her nose on the tail-end of her scarf and — wow, this scarf has really had better days — and trudges on home with her head down. The only sign of her relative breakdown are red-trimmed eyes and the occasional sniffle.

At this point, even the notion of hailing a cab or calling a Lyft is enough to send a shiver down Lena’s spine. So she bundles down, winding her black peacoat tightly around her with her nose tucked into her filthy scarf, and walks home.

It’s not until she’s riding the elevator up to the thirty-sixth floor, listening to a watered-down tune of poorly synchronized violins, that she remembers she has nothing but a bed and a couch to come home to. No sheets, no towels, pillows, groceries, nothing.

With her eyes sticky at the corners from crusted-over tears and pale, pink fingertips from the cold, Lena is far too exhausted to do much more than kick off her heels and clamber onto the bare couch set against the far wall. She tugs her coat more securely around herself, stuffs an elbow under her head for support. Her last thought before slipping into an unrestful slumber is that she really should have bought a damn sectional and not this tiny, overpriced sofa.

xx

The next morning, she gets up, because, well. What else is there to do?

Also, she has the most foul, rancid taste in her mouth from the whiskey and not brushing her teeth, and she may not be hungover but she scrambles for the bathroom to rinse out the cotton-mouth nonetheless.

Lena indulges herself with another bout of self-pity as she sinks to the bathroom floor, rubbing the sleep from her face and pushing her hair back over her scalp. 

There’s a bitter humiliation stirring in her stomach as she thinks over the previous night. How fucking stupid is she? To think that she can actually go back to the nights where she’d get picked up at bars by unnamed, painfully beautiful women who want nothing more to do with her than to get their hands on her ass? She’s not naive enough to think that her relationship with Siobhan might’ve lasted, not after everything, not with the gory target slathered across her back. A relationship for her is out of the question, not with anyone who knows who she is, alright, she _ gets _ that. But does she really have to lose the right to nice and dirty, regrettable one night stands? What is she supposed to do now, start an assorted vibrator collection, download porn, and fantasize away?

Lena groans, dropping her head back into her palms.

The pity-party doesn’t last too long, and eventually Lena scoops herself off the bathroom floor. At first, it’s like twisting her own ear to force herself back onto her couch and pull her laptop out from her suitcase, to refrain from checking emails or sleeping the rest of her day away, but Lena’s itching for a hot shower and she can’t do so until she actually _ buys _ things for this damn place.

So. She spends the next few hours placing various different orders in different intervals, taps out a Postmates order for breakfast and phones the doorman downstairs to double-check every deliverer’s identification before allowing any up. Throughout the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, entourages of delivery personnel are in and out of her apartment, dropping off packages, groceries, furniture. Some stick around and assemble things for her, deep chocolate bookshelves, a maple-wood dining table, and that Gucca Italy vanity finally arrives as well.

Alright,_ fine _, in a moment of weakness she places an order for those Turkish towels she desperately misses. Fucking sue her.

She’s sure to be as politely reserved as possible, rarely leaving her perch on the couch where she can continue adding item after item to her shopping carts on four different windows and nine different tabs. She only interacts with them to quickly open the door, gesture to a corner, and drop a bill on the counter for them to collect on their way out as a tip. The less chance they have of noticing her face, the better.

And, okay, maybe she’s already being extra enough by hiding behind a pair of black Ray Bans while indoors _ and _ staring at a computer screen, but she swears it’s an essential safeguard.

Eventually, somehow, it’s well into the afternoon, the far trim of orange horizon licking into the fading paleness of the darkening sky, and Lena hasn’t eaten since the açai bowl she ordered that morning. While she rummages through her freezer for one of the gourmet, frozen dinners she’d stocked up on, her gut starts to churn when she thinks about how she basically just spent her entire day on her couch overdosing on retail therapy, and suddenly her long, accomplishing day that took a teeth-pulling strength of energy to get through, just doesn’t quite feel so productive anymore.

As she’s chewing over a bite of steaming sweet potato, half-pondering whether what she’s eating is actually any different from a basic Lean Cuisine meal she could buy for four dollars, Lena starts itching for a drink. Like, a stiff one. One that doesn’t have an aftertaste like rubbing alcohol and that doesn’t remind her of the mediocre cast parties Siobhan used to take her to before her career took off and they started cashing in on the more luxurious invitations. If last night — and just the last month of her life in general — are anything to go by, she no longer can just waltz into any bar she pleases, order a drink and mind her own business. Because while, sure, she’s painfully craving physical intimacy to ward off the crippling loneliness of being ostracized by most of society, she’s more desperate to just be left _ alone _.

It’s why she came to National City in the first place — a fresh start, as ridiculously cliché as that is. It’s a major urban center on the opposite side of the country where she can forget the blood on her hands from her own inactions (because she didn’t _ do _ anything, no, she didn’t, that’s exactly the fucking point) and maybe learn how to not lead such a frivolous existence. Granted, some desolate cabin on a snow-capped mountain would be a better place to truly be _ alone _ , but there’s something fleetingly juicy about being able to simply _ exist _ in a room full of people and not have a single person know who you are or care to find out. 

The more crowded a place, the more likely people are too concerned with the ever churning cogs of their own lives to stop and take in every face around them. Well, so she thought.

It’s this train of thought that reminds her — Lena _ has _ been to National City before, once, two years ago, when she was fending off flashing cameras and TMZ tails for much different reasons.

It’s not— 

Okay, it isn’t exactly ideal.

But short of staying in her apartment and Postmates-ing a bottle of wine to her door before she inevitably remembers she doesn’t have a corkscrew yet, she’s not left with a whole lot of options.

Because if there’s _ one _ place in this damn city where, if she were recognized, she would still be left to her own devices, or even better, she’d be the least famous person in the room and looked over entirely…

It’s Roulette.

xx

The only drawback in her foolproof plan is that, in order to actually get into the club, she does have to use her real name. She has to drop the acidic L-bomb three times to get in — once to the nondescript doorman lounging against the brick wall of the alley in a hoodie and jeans who types away on his phone and only offers Lena a spare glance before waving her into the creaking metal door; the second time is when she steps into a hallway dimly lit with red lights lining the footway that leads to an elevator which two security guards stand on either side of. When she does let the name off her lips, there’s a brief eyebrow raise and an exchanged glance between the two men, but otherwise they call the lift for her and allow her inside. One of them follows her inside with a curt nod, standing between Lena and the keypad before he presses the second of only two buttons. 

The elevator hisses up to a storey that is definitively not the second floor in a relatively long but swift trajectory. Before the doors even slide open, Lena can already hear the tell-tale pumps of music, the fluctuating, faint hum of overlapping chatter.

And then they’re opening, parting like curtains, and the dark hallway she walks down quickly opens up to a more open, dark room; to her right, a glass wall and door lead out onto a balcony where Lena can make out the silhouettes of a few people languidly smoking in front of a blurry cityscape skyline. To her left are set of doorways she remembers to be the bathrooms, and in front of her stands a woman in a blood-red, skin-tight gown, her luscious, blonde-streaked hair curling around her neck and over the front of her shoulder, the other painted with intricate ink, standing behind a simple hostess stand with nothing before her but a dark cell phone. Behind her is a glass wall draped with dark curtains only faintly parted to reveal a clear, metal-paned doorway with a thick red carpet rope crossing in front.

“Oh, Lena Luthor, it’s been too long.”

So, the third time, she doesn’t have to drop the name herself, it’s done for her.

Lips tight and arms still at her sides, Lena steps slowly up to the small podium. “Veronica.”

Veronica’s red lips twist at the corners into a smirk. “Come on, I know you’re at least a little bit excited to see me.”

Lena sighs through her nostrils, resists the urge to roll her eyes. “It’s nice to see you,” she relents.

Veronica laughs. “That’s better. But really, it _ has _ been a while. What brings the innocent Luthor all the way over to my end of the neighborhood?”

Lena’s already regretting this, already considering turning right back around and dipping into a liquor store for her preferred poison, can feel the thumps in her chest growing louder, and yet — 

She must be pretty pathetically lonely if having the driest small talk in the universe with Veronica Sinclair, of all people, is actually scratching at the unreachable, unspeakable itch in her heart.

“I’m checking out some new job opportunities,” Lena tells her, clearing her throat. It’s not completely a lie.

“Oh?” 

“Careful, V, your interest is showing.”

Veronica scoffs playfully, leaning forward on her elbows _ just _ so. “Please. The whole world is interested, at this point.”

“I’ll remember that if I’m struck with the sudden urge to be interviewed. May I head in?” Lena gestures to the door behind Veronica, who tilts her head in response.

“What, no Siobhan this time?”

It’s bait, it’s such fucking bait, because — okay, Siobhan’s not like, _ famous _ famous, she doesn’t have Taylor Swift’s phone number or anything (no matter how often she’ll insist in public that she does), and Lena herself is only well known if you fall into either Siobhan’s fanbase, follow the careers of her family members’, or you just so happened to be really into The Killers when that one music video she starred in came out in 2013.

But the point is — there’s been a lot of air around her lately, and it didn’t take very long after someone sniffed up the trail left behind when Lena fled the city for them to trace it to a breakup. And everyone in the industry knows: the quieter, more anticlimactic the breakup, the more scandalous it must be in the tabloids the next day. 

Someone in Veronica’s position, working a job that requires her to know the intricate details behind every person’s career, with a tightly secured lid of discretion — there was no way in hell she doesn’t know.

“Not tonight.”

“What a shame.” Veronica grins, bites her bottom lip. “If you change your mind about that… interview, well. You know where I’ll be.”

Veronica steps back from the podium to unhook the red rope hanging over the door, holding it aside as she waves Lena in. “Enjoy your night, babe.”

Lena doesn’t have the greatest memory of the place; the shape of the long room with low tables and dark leather couches tucked all along the right side against floor-length windows, the left with evenly-spaced high top tables, all under a thrumming pale-red glow, occasionally sliced by the rotating dance floor lights at the opposite end — it’s all vaguely familiar, but like a dream. She hadn’t exactly been sober when she came here two years ago, had likely been a few tequila shots into her night. 

Lena’s skin now prickles with the staggering awareness of how stone-cold sober she is. Which, in a club, is never a good feeling, and so she makes a straight shot down the room for the bar at the end.

It’s too dark to make out who anyone is as she passes through the crowded club, too loud to pick up on familiar voices, but she’s not too concerned. Yet, anyway.

Once at the end, the room once again splits open into two areas; on the right, the floor steps down a few levels into a wide ocean of a dance floor thrumming with bodies, smoke and strobing lights, until the walls round out and narrow down to a DJ spinning in a glass booth. To her left, up a very short, curved flight of stairs, the bar looks over the whole floor, safely elevated from any speakers pointing in the opposite direction. This is where Lena heads up next, pulling down self-consciously at the hem of her short, black lace cocktail dress.

It’s surprisingly uncrowded up here away from the floor, there being a scattered few of empty seats at the bar and only a couple groups of bystanders lingering around the edges, making use of the quieter space to engage in actual conversation. Because, thankfully, the acoustics were thought out by whatever architect Veronica hired to design the place, for the mind-crunching music really doesn’t penetrate the area of the bar all too much. Lena lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding when she drops onto an empty barstool in the middle, dropping her clutch unceremoniously onto the bar top and shuts her eyes. It’s like stepping entirely into a different room, and she basks momentarily in being able to hear her own thoughts again.

“There’s a spot out back that’s better for naps, if you want.”

Lena blinks open her eyes, taking in the bartender in front of her who tucks a dark rag into the back pocket of her black jeans with a cheeky smile. She’s actually rather cute, Lena realizes, with long blonde hair tucked back into a tight ponytail, curly tendrils sneaking out on both sides to frame her face. God, Lena takes so much as a walk in the park with her hair tied back like that and every strand of hair suddenly wants to burst out in a frizzy mess, she can’t imagine what it would take to look that composed while _ working _.

It takes a second to register what on Earth the bartender is talking about, but when it does, Lena laughs, though it comes out more a disbelieving huff of air, and she becomes suddenly uneasy about how unfamiliar it feels to pull her mouth into a smile, like there’s a way to do it wrong.

“Thank you, but I think I’ve done enough mindless lying around today.”

“Oh don’t tell me that, jealousy is not a cute color on me.”

Lena can’t really imagine any color that wouldn’t look good on this woman, she notes as she takes in the broad, shoulders and sculpted arms wrapped in a tight black t-shirt that hugs down deliciously narrow hips where it tucks into the low-hanging skinny jeans. 

She’s awfully too sober to be mentally stripping someone like this.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Lena assures. “I’ll have whatever you don’t like, in that case.”

The woman laughs, this childish, gleeful giggle that’s infectious enough it almost makes Lena laugh again as well, but she keeps it to a tight-lipped smile hidden behind her fingers as she rests her chin in her palm.

“Alright,” the woman says, already stretching to reach a shelf behind her. If her shirt rides up a bit above her ass and Lena’s gaze drops, well, she’s only human. “But I’m not gonna take it back if you don’t like it.”

“Deal.”

The woman pouts, suddenly, hesitating before pouring two different liquors into a shaker. “No, gosh, I’m kidding, if you don’t like it, I promise I wouldn’t—”

“It’s fine, I’ve got a wide palate.” Lena waves her on.

The woman ends up making her some kind of whiskey cocktail with a pale, amber hue to it served up in a martini glass, in it floating a twisted orange rind, the entire thing glowing under the red lights.

When Lena brings the rim of the chilled glass to her lips and tastes the sharp drink, the bartender’s eyes eagerly flitting over her face for a reaction, Lena’s first thought is that… well, it’s certainly got whiskey, and it’s essentially a Manhattan with an extra _ something _ else that she can’t put her tongue to, but it’s _ good _ . Like, dangerously good — a sophisticatedly subtle bite of ginger combined with the natural smoky edge that a good whiskey has, it’s _ heavenly _.

“Oh fuck, that’s amazing.”

The bar itself is rather long, since it winds in a large U and doubles around on itself for double the seats, and before the bartender can respond, another one is poking around the bend at the apex with an exasperated look on her face.

“For Christ’s sake, Kara, 13’s been waving at me for five minutes, can you take care of that?”

“One sec,” the bartender — Kara — promises with an adorable smile before the other bartender has even finished their sentence, already making her way down the bar to another patron.

Left alone to her own thoughts, Lena slumps into her seat and pulls her phone from her bra.

She’s not one for social media, at least not lately. She hasn’t been particularly interested in making tentative interactions online or throwing out tidbits of herself that could be easily misconstrued or held against her much later, not after everything that happened with Lex. But she does still have multiple platforms set up to notify her if her name comes up in any news outlets or tabloids.

It’s never been the healthiest channel to pop culture, but it became even more addictive this last month, notifications pinging across her home screen comically fast that first week in the aftermath of the news.

It’s not quieting down yet, per se, but the media is definitely losing steam when it comes to her. The last thing that surfaced was a wave of articles speculating her hasty departure from Metropolis, most correctly connecting it to her abrupt breakup mixed with an overwhelming pressure of being related to _ him _ coming together in a volatile instability that sent her fleeing. A couple weighed in that she was even still conspiring with her brother, and that her escape was moreso a mission to spread the suffering elsewhere, to expand his terrain of suffering, which is ludicrous because how would she even _ do _ that — but, well.

The only one suffering out here is Lena, anyway.

But the cocktail does a little something to quell the disgusting loneliness in her chest.

Thankfully, there’s no one reporting on spotting her near Roulette, and with that small consolation of relief she slips her phone back into her bra.

It isn’t long before Kara comes bouncing back, dumping a glass of ice into an unseen sink behind the bar. “So listen,” she starts, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and glancing up at Lena. “I’m really stressed out right now, because you’ll never guess what just happened.”

The lilt to Kara’s tone and the way the corner of her mouth twitches like she’s trying to hold back a smile just _ amuses _ Lena in and of itself. 

So, she takes the bait. “Yeah? What’s that?”

“So basically, just now — wow like five minute ago — the past, present, and future just walked right into the bar.” She blows out an exaggerated puff of air. “It was tense.”

It’s such an awful joke but, sue her, Lena lets out a loud laugh, covering her mouth again with her hand. 

Kara is off again at the beckoning of another customer, gliding swiftly behind the bar, bouncing on her toes while Lena’s still catching up with the joke. Lena watches her thoughtfully, trying to not make it painfully obvious that she’s leering like a teenager, but it only takes her so far. Every now and then, while Kara’s rattling her cocktail shaker over her shoulder she catches Lena’s eye and smiles softly. Or Kara will sneakily pop a maraschino cherry into her mouth and try to be subtle while she chews it, only to catch Lena’s raised eyebrow, and then she winks a little clumsily as she swallows it down. 

And of course, there are more jokes.

“So I’m mixing some margaritas, and this dog — you know Alec Baldwin? Yeah, his dog comes right up to the bar, and goes, ‘_ hey barkeep, it’s my birthday today. How ‘bout a free drink?’ _”

Lena’s already struggling to suppress her laughter and Kara isn’t even finished with the joke yet, but the impression Kara puts on for the parts are cartoonish and goofy, and it just feels so _ good _ to laugh.

“And so I go, yeah! For sure, pal, the toilet’s just right down the hall.”

Although, Lena’s personal favorite has to be:

“Oh! Right, last night, this guy runs into the bar and asks me to pour him a shot of every scotch I’ve got, to line it up real nice for him, right? So I do, and he just starts pounding them back, and I tell him, hey buddy you’re drinking those pretty fast, and he goes, ‘_ you would be too if you had what I have _,’ and I’m thinking dang, this guy must’ve gotten some pretty awful news, right? And so I ask, well, what do you have? And you know what he says?”

(Lena would fucking murder a man if it meant she could squeeze those adorably dimpled cheeks)

“No, what’d he say?”

“He goes, _ ‘25 cents, _’ and bolts it right out of here.”

All in all, Lena’s charmed. Like, thoroughly charmed and smitten and she can’t really remember the last time that warm pleasant feeling blossomed in her chest when someone just wanted to _ talk _ to her. It’s like drinking that first sip of a perfectly hot espresso when Kara came back up to her again, that tingling warmth that stretches up the back of her neck and cradles her cheeks. It’s just infectious.

She just wants to scramble to cling to it, like a high that she knows will quickly fade once the novelty has worn off, but maybe if she just digs her nails in, it might stay.

Okay maybe there’s a reason they say that three martinis is when shit starts to get weird.

Lena’s disappointed to be licking up the last drops of her drink, is reluctant to turn down Kara’s upbeat smile as she pulls the empty glass away and asks if Lena wants yet another.

A glance at the gold-plated face of her watch, it’s already nearing 1 a.m., and it’s been a while since Lena stayed out this late. Not since—

Well, before.

“Unfortunately, it’s getting time to call it, I think. I’ll grab the check whenever.” Lena slides her credit card across the bartop.

Kara’s hip cocks out slightly as she pouts, her lips scrunching together. “Ah, okay. Thanks for laughing at my jokes.”

“Are you always this much of a comedian?”

Kara shrugs nonchalantly as she swipes Lena’s card through the strip at the computer. “Nah. You just seemed like you could use a laugh.”

Lena is still blinking, nonplussed, by the time Kara slides her receipt and card across to her with a pen. Her smile is wide, easy and shining, even in the dimness of the crimson-lit bar, even through the somewhat muffled pounds of music.

“It was a pleasure to serve you, Miss…” Kara lets the sentence hang, almost not even a question at all, like it would be up to Lena’s discretion whether or not to offer her name at all, but the ever-slight rising intonation of her sentence makes it clear that she’s willing to hear it.

If Lena is willing to give it.

But she only drops the L-bomb three times tonight, and this isn’t one of them.

“Lena,” is what she settles for.

“It was my pleasure, Lena. I’m Kara. Obviously.”

Lena laughs. “Have a good rest of your night, Kara.”

Lena’s never been very good at words, or expressing gratitude — she doesn’t have the longest list of strengths to begin with, but she does know how to drop a clean-cut signature, so if she tacks on a hundred-dollar tip to the tab before Kara notices, well. 

Throwing money is what she knows how to do.

xx

When Lena gets home half an hour later, she’s stumbling on her heels more from exhaustion than anything else. Which, she’s not even sure why, considering she spent her day in a long cocoon of wallowing with her feet kicked up, but — whatever.

She does have enough energy this time around to scrub her face clean of makeup, to brush her teeth, if somewhat lazily, before crashing onto her new silk Armani sheets. 

And maybe for the first time in a month, she falls asleep with a smile on her face.


	2. the air i would kill to breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lena's sad, gay, and technically not a liar, okay?

****When Lena’s eyes blearily blink open to a sunlit room the following morning, her first thought is that the silk sheets were the best idea she’s had in a long time.

The second thought, which takes a few moments for her discombobulated brain to string together coherently, is that she has utterly and absolutely no idea where to go from here.

She has no job, no friends, no family — not anymore, not really — no _ purpose _. Lena’s not sure if she even remembers how to hold a friendship for longer than it takes a barista to scribble her name across the side of a paper cup. She hasn’t updated her resume in over six years, and she’s not sure she ever even learned how to cook something using any sort of appliance more complicated than a microwave. She’s completely, embarrassingly alone in this city, with nothing to offer and nothing to take.

Yeah, good morning to her.

A yawn falls from her drool-crusted mouth and she stretches her arms high over her shoulders, joints popping and a small groan building at the back of her throat. Lena shuffles out of the safe cocoon of her bed, shucks aside the covers. The pads of her bare feet brush at the sharp coolness of the hardwood floors, sending a shock up her legs, and she has half a mind to retreat back into the safety of her bed and hide there all day, all week. But she doesn’t have anyone to bring her coffee to bed, not anymore

She does rouse eventually, makes for the bathroom and mindlessly brushes her teeth. Her own thoughts begin to grow sharper, more vivid in their subsequent darkness. It’s unsettling to think how long she could last like that, for how long she could survive in this small apartment feeding off Postmates and becoming the kind of person who binges trashy reality TV until it fries her brain and the circles under her eyes become permanent. How _ long _ she could stretch her inheritance to keep her going and going, living meaninglessly and endlessly in this void of an apartment, forever, no contact with anyone in the outside world. Hell, she might even forget that the external world exists at all and she could totally lose her whole fucking _ mind. _

Lena quickly spits out her toothpaste after that, dresses, skips the coffee, and bustles out the front door.

xx

Lena spends the rest of her morning with sunglasses and an MIT baseball cap tucked over her face, fantasizes now and again that she’s actually a well-liked celebrity and not the sister of the most hated man in the United States.

The fantasy comes and goes, but never lingers long.

Mostly, she just explores what National City has to offer, but even this proves to be… taxing. She wanders a flea market, but she’s not what to buy, if she likes the aroma of natural incense or if she should stick with candles, if she really would even use a compilation kit of five different homemade jams, and somehow in the end she walks out with a thick tube of lipstick repurposed as a flask. Lena browses three floors of Modern Art museum for two hours before realizing that the restlessness inside her was plain boredom, and she realizes that she’s not very good at appreciating something she can’t touch, can’t read. 

Since getting swept up in her relationship with Siobhan and living essentially just to be arm candy to someone much more famous than her, which is essentially what her childhood standing behind Lex consisted of too, Lena just feels like she’s left with this uneasily empty pit in her stomach, plagued by the awareness that she doesn’t so much as know what she even _ likes _ anymore.

Like, does she really enjoy eating blueberry oatmeal for breakfast, or does she just think she does because it was a habit she picked up when she and Siobhan started dating? Did Lena learn how to completely disassemble a car engine and put it back together by the age of twelve because she was interested in automotives, or did Lex just want to prove he was a good teacher? Is she actually interested in vampire movies, or was it just because Siobhan was the lead of the hit Hollywood vampire movie of the decade? Does Lena enjoy playing chess or did she just spend most of her life as an opponent to Lex to help _ him _ get better at it? Is Lena a real person with dreams, hopes, hobbies, preferences and tastes, or has she lived nearly three decades as just a shadow of a personality that let everyone around her take the wheel on her own path?

She knows the answer, obviously.

And it is both humiliatingly horrifying to realize and also a crisp breath of fresh air to acknowledge.

In recognizing that she has allowed herself to become this two-dimensional shell of a person who has no relationships with anyone that could be comparable to the one she shares with her credit card, it means she has a chance to… well, do something about it. She can change her ways, be a better person, all that nonsense.

The only problem is that she’s not quite sure what _ good _ people actually do, so. She orders a cortado at a red-bricked coffee shop a few blocks down from the museum, browses some used bookstores, buys an anthology of Immanuel Kant’s greatest seminal works on moral philosophy. She stops by a homeless shelter and writes a check for twenty grand, and the woman she hands it to rushes around the counter to tug Lena in a teary hug. Even when the woman stares down at the check with wide-eyed shock, she doesn't bat an eye at Lena’s name, but that might be just a selective attention thing. Lena hastily leaves before she actually _ can _ be recognized, after insisting she’d like the donation to remain anonymous, and continues on down the sidewalk as if she’d just dropped off a book at the library. But she doesn’t exactly feel that much better about anything, and aside from a soft swell of sufficiency that she contributed _ something_, she can’t help but feel like she’s missing a crucial point to being a “good” person, because she's been plugging donations into charities for years now, and she's pretty sure that doing so behind an anonymous alias is a fairly cowardly thing to do, not to mention that giving her money to people who would actually use it is the bare-minimum expectation for someone of her wealth. Doesn't exactly make her a saint. And she’s also not sure if what distinguishes her from her hideously corrupted, evil brother is that she’s actually good, deep down (under overlapping layers of distracted, misled, self-destructive behaviors), or just someone who wants to do good things so that people will consider her a good person.

Can you truly _ be _a good person if you’re the latter? Is she running herself into a loop if she thinks she can possibly go from Option B to Option A, just by throwing some money around and reading up on what an old white guy said a few hundred years ago?

This all leaves Lena breathing rather heavily against the alley side of a clothing store, blinking forcefully against tears she refuses to let fall, pressing hard against her breastbone like it might stifle her bruising, hammering heart. Someone might say she’s hyperventilating, but once she starts thinking about how she could really use a drink right about now, she then reminisces about a certain cocktail from the night before. It is then that she decides she’s done enough soul-searching for today and deserves a break.

Like, sort of enough.

That’s what leads Lena to retreat back to the unsettling quietness of her apartment for the day, spend the afternoon unwrapping anything that hasn’t already been opened and turning the place into something that looks a bit more lived-in, rather than a picturesque shell of a life from a magazine capture. Everything is still too clean, too unused, and she’s not sure she’s succeeded on that front by the time the evening rolls around, but there’s only so much a girl with crippling doubts about her own integrity can do.

Of course, inevitably, she decides to go back to Roulette. It was just a matter of time.

There’s this tickling… _warmth_ at the tip of her tongue as she shuffles through outfits, deciding what to wear. Because, well, yes it’s irrational, Kara is just a bartender that makes a business out of charming her clientele. It’s how she makes her living, and Lena’s never been one to assume someone in customer service was flirting with her just because they were being _ nice_. She doesn’t imagine someone could make rent very easily by spitting in someone’s drink and calling them the devil incarnate, Luthor or not. But the fact Kara even asked her name at all, well, having one person in the world not know who she is feels like a blessing, one she won’t question. 

It’s just — fine, Lena recognizes that the only way she will get any sort of kindness her way is by paying someone who is in the very particular position of not caring who she is beyond a centurion AMEX card. She’s sunk this low, she’s just that pitifully lonely, _ fine _. She can live with that.

In the end, she settles with a long-sleeved midnight blue dress with a square neckline that perhaps shows an ideal spread of her collarbones, accentuates the length of her neck, and it has nothing to do with Kara. Because Kara is just doing her job, and Lena is buying what she’s selling.

Oh, god, she is pathetic.

xx

As the night before, it’s Veronica who greets her after the elevator.

“Two nights in a row, babe? That’s a little eager, don’t you think?”

Lena would rather call her mother than admit she has somewhat of soft-spot for the club owner, but she does allow a smile. “Like a certain letter you wrote back in high school? That kind of eager?”

“I stand by what I said back then, too.” Veronica shrugs nonchalantly as she unclips the red rope. “Enjoy your evening, Little Luthor.”

Lena doesn’t linger long enough to take in the atmosphere, instead makes a straight shot past the tables, cutting around the corner of the dance floor and up the short, twisted staircase to the bar. It’s busier tonight — not the bartop itself, there’s still an array of open seats, little more than half full, but there’s more people idling around the area, the laughter and carefree chatter much more pronounced than it’d been last night.

But behind the bar, inevitably, is Kara, with the same wide jovial smile and tight black ensemble, though tonight she has a black handkerchief tying her blond tendrils of hair out of her face. Inexplicably, Lena’s inhales sharply, feels a familiarly odd sort of tug deep in her chest, and it’s not until she’s rubbing her palms against the hips of her dress that she realizes she’s _ nervous _.

And not at being out in the open like this, not in the kind of jitters one gets at going to a bar alone, uncertain as to how the night might end. 

She’s nervous because Kara is beautiful and endearing, and Lena’s… not sure what she is.

She slips into a spot close to where she sat the night before, safely framed on either side by empty seats. It takes a minute for Kara to notice her, and in the split millisecond that her eyes meet Lena’s, she panics that Kara might very well not remember who she is — it’s probably hard enough to keep track of faces as a normal bartender, but in a place like this, well, how can anyone be memorable if everyone is? — but then Kara’s lips, soaking red in the lights of the bar, split apart in a familiar smile and her eyes are glistening.

“You came back.” She says it graciously, like it’s an intimate revelation, but, well. Lena’s always seen the world through a hopelessly romantic lens.

“I guess I have.” Lena matches the smile.

Despite the way Kara had just been rushing back and forth down the line of the bar, she now stands absolutely still in front of Lena like she has all the time in the world for her. “Well, how adventurous are you feeling?”

It takes Lena a second to realize that she’s referring to the drinks. “I think I’ll just have the same one as last night, actually, if you don’t mind.”

Kara nods sagely. “‘Bout a four out of ten. Bonus points though for consistency, though.”

Of course, Kara really does work on borrowed time, and tonight she doesn’t have as many intermittent moments to spare for jokes and puns, so once the orange drink is slid in front of her, Kara quickly rushes back to work and taking care of the rest of the bar.

Which is fine, Lena decides, inhaling deeply before her first sip. It’s nice to just be alone out in the open like this, to let her guard down, at least a little bit, without some cheap paparazzi disguise. Even with all the people around her and the music, she actually—

“Oh Lena Luthor. It must be my lucky night.”

Being three martinis deep suddenly feels like something very, very necessary.

Lena doesn’t even turn. “Leslie, swore I heard that your show got cancelled.”

The woman laughs loud and boisterous, hopping up carelessly onto the seat beside Lena with a beer in her hand. “Yeah girl, and I heard your whole existence got cancelled. How was your Thanksgiving, by the way? Family up to anything fun?”

“Peachy. Did you need something?”

“Alright alright, someone’s crabby, I get it.” Leslie brushes a lock of her white hair over her shoulder, leans in closer. “No, actually, I just thought I’d come say hello and thank you for taking the spotlight off me. But also… I did want to say I’m sorry.”

Lena turns at that, hesitates. “For what?”

The former radio-show host sighs. “We’ve never seen eye to eye on some things, I know—”

“You literally asked Siobhan for a lap dance. In front of me. At my birthday party.”

“I _ know _,” Leslie repeats firmly. “So I just wanted to reach out and say I get it, I know how it feels, blah, whatever.” 

“Oh. “ A bit skeptical, Lena glances around them briefly. “Thank you?”

“It just, yeah, it sucks, doesn’t it? The media will really hold one silly mistake against you forever.”

Lena cringes a little. “I mean, technically, I didn’t make a—”

“Such utter bullshit.” Leslie sighs wistfully again.

Lena decides it’s best to choose her battles, buries her face back into her drink.

“Leslie!” Kara appears in front of them with a wide smile. “So funny I’m seeing you right now — didn’t you ask me to tell you if Cat Grant ever stopped in? Think I just saw her headed down to the floor, but she might be on her way out again.”

“Fuck, for real?” Leslie downs the last half of her pint in one dangerous gulp, wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand. “Nice chattin’ with you, dollface, but I gotta grab her now or I’m never getting Jimmy Fallon’s number.”

Leslie disappears after that.

Lena’s shoulders relax minutely as she glances up at Kara’s sympathetic expression, lets out a soft groan. “Thank you for that, truly.”

“No problem. Saw you had that look on your face.”

“A look?”

Kara gestures vaguely around them. “Y’know like, _ SOS, someone’s talking to me _. I see it a lot in here.”

“Well, some people here I don’t mind talking to.” Lena says and immediately cringes because — oh, God, was that too flirtatious? Or no, of course not, even worse, was it just _ weird _ to say to someone she didn’t know at all, or maybe it wasn’t but Kara had no idea that she was actually trying to express something? 

Lena’s on the verge of an aneurysm and she hasn’t even finished her first drink. Has it really been this long since Lena tried flirting with a stranger?

It’s hard to tell under the glowing red lights, and it’s probably wishful thinking, but Lena thinks she sees heat rush up Kara’s cheeks as she begins playing uselessly with her glasses. 

“Oh, ha, yeah, right. Same. Uh.” Kara clears her throat. “So what was Leslie bugging you about anyway?”

It’s probably in Lena’s head.

When the question registers, Lena immediately balks, reaches for her drink to buy her a second, because, “_ well, she was just trying to bond with me by comparing her once saying something not-POC on live radio to my brother murdering hundreds of people,” _is definitively not what one says to the cute bartender with juicy biceps.

“Just some… work stuff,” she answers finally.

Kara tucks the rag in her hands into her back pocket, perks up. “Oh, what do you do for work?”

Lena smacks her lips together, blinks at Kara, but Kara speaks again quickly before she can.

“I mean — gosh, sorry, I’m not supposed to ask things like that here.”

“No, um, well, it’s fine.” Because Lena is fucking gay and can’t stand being responsible for that crestfallen face. “I just, well… I’m sort of between jobs at the moment.”

Again, _ technically _ not a lie. Lena has learned this is how people generally define unemployment. She’s just been _ in between jobs _ for six years, it’s fine.

“Cool. What kind of stuff are you looking for?” Kara leans forward so her palms fall onto the edge of the bar, tilts her head thoughtfully.

Lena takes another sip of her drink, because, wow, her throat is unexpectedly dry. “Oh you know, just some… research. Yep, research, I’m trying to get involved in research. Again.”

“What kind of research?”

Lena’s going to self-combust.

“Well I studied mainly bioengineering but right now I’m going into… um, oncology. Yes. Which is just—”

“Study of how cancerous cells form, yeah. Wow, that’s… unexpected.”

Both impressed and apprehensive, Lena glances up quickly. “Why is that?”

Kara’s eyes widen slightly, and she laughs nervously. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply — it’s not like, you look _ not _ smart or anything, I just — well, most people that come here, they usually — oh man, I’m really making a lot of assumptions, I’m sorry.” Kara waves her hands, flustered. “Just, forget I said any of that. Wow, congratulations, you must be brilliant.”

Okay, maybe it’s not exactly in Lena’s head.

Lena’s mouth splits into a soft, amused smile. “Thank you, Kara.”

Kara takes off after that with a small wave, before she’s whisking up empty glasses down the bar and shaking new concoctions, gracing others with her sweet remarks and emphatic laughter.

No one else bothers Lena that night, but she’s busy nonetheless with that conversation lurching around her brain, weaving in and out of the forefront of her consciousness. Although Lena’s never been the kind of person to just have one drink and leave, her fingers bounce against her thigh in nervous jitters and she knows she has something to take care of.

When Kara rounds by to check in on her empty glass, Lena shakes her head and asks to settle up.

Kara waves her hand flippantly. “Nah, you way over-tipped last night. This one’s on the house.”

Lena’s shoulders slump in mock exasperation. “Kara, don’t start with me.”

“I am absolutely starting with you.”

What a smug little shit, Lena thinks. But _ God _ is she cute. “You really don’t want to play this game.”

Intrigued, Kara raises her eyebrows. “Yeah? Maybe I do.”

It’s said so softly, so gently, and if this was one of Siobhan’s movies, they wouldn’t be talking about the money or drinks at all, they’d be talking about something clenching around Lena’s chest, something stifling, a loneliness that paralyzes her bones.

“Don’t blame me when you lose,” Lena says with a gentle upturn of her mouth, her voice low and crackling, leaving a fifty-dollar bill on the bartop before she turns away.

xx

As soon as she’s out into the alley, the brisk air slapping her in the face, Lena tugs her peacoat tightly around herself and pulls out her phone. She quickly scrolls down her contacts list, and after a precise selection and holding it to her ear, it’s not long before a familiar voice sounds on the other end.

“Mm… hello?”

Lena sighs. “Thank God you’re up. Listen, I need a favor.”

“...Lena? Lena Luthor? Shit, do you know what time it is?”

“Oh relax, it’s not even eleven.” Lena walks down the street with her head down, tucks her hair behind her ear.

“Hm. Can’t exactly raise a seven year-old with that attitude.” A low, tired sigh. “So, what’s this favor?”

Lena bites her lip. “I need to get in on your research.”

“You _ need _ to?”

“Yes.”

“What, you lie to a cute actress at a bar and say you were involved in my research again?”

“...You’re actually very close. She was the bartender.”

“Jesus, Lee.”

“So…”

“Really know how to make a big entrance, huh?” There’s some unintelligible grumbling on the other line, the shuffling of fabric. “I need to talk to my team, run it by my boss—” Another sigh. “I’ll see what I can do, okay? But listen, can we talk about this later? Can’t even think straight right now.”

Grinning from ear to ear, Lena nods eagerly. “Yes, yes of course, you sweet, darling genius. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Oh, and Sam?”

“Hm?”

“Thank you.”

xx

She does call Sam back the next day, and they set up a time to meet the following weekend. They arrange to meet in a coffee shop in the area near Ruby’s school on the north side, and when Lena strides into the sunny cafe, she pushes her sunglasses back over her head. There’s no hesitation when Sam quickly pulls her into a tight embrace.

“It’s been too long, you big dummy,” Sam sighs into Lena’s hair.

Lena laughs sardonically. “Yeah, I know. Should’ve called sooner, eh?”

Sam pulls back, and with a mockingly serious face as she smacks at Lena’s shoulder, she nods. “Like six years ago, yeah, absolutely. But I’ll find it in me to forgive you this time.”

“You’re too soft to hold a grudge, anyway. And how’s Ruby?”

“Oh _ God, _ that little brat.” Sam groans dramatically, but Lena sees right through the exasperated ruse and can hear the adoration in her tone. “She’s way too popular, always has something going on. Yesterday was an audition for the second-grade play, tonight she’s at a sleepover, and tomorrow is soccer practice. But, anyway, I’ll tell you all about her in a minute. First — coffee.”

They turn to step into line, and Lena is saying, “Okay, yes, but I do really want to hear all about—” when a hot latte is immediately tossed into her face and she can’t process anything but the way everything just fucking _ burns _.

“I don’t know how you can look yourself in the mirror every day,” a cracked, low voice hisses in Lena’s face, and Lena is gasping, struggling to scrape the scalding liquid from her face, hardly registering the words and blinking through the liquid dripping down her face, when she realizes it’s just a girl, some teenage kid with a remarkably heartbroken fury trembling in her face, and Lena’s stomach crumbles. “I hope someday, someone takes from you everything you’ve taken from me, I hope there’s one thing in this world you love and I hope someone fucking kills that too, I—”

Lena forgets how to breathe and Sam is pressuring the girl back and fretting over Lena, and the whole thing is making a rather horrendous scene. 

They leave pretty quickly after that.

Neither of them have said a word, even once in the quiet of Sam’s Subaru while Lena blots her face with some spare Dunkin’ Donuts napkins found in the glovebox. There’s just the soft hum of an indie music station through the speakers while Sam drives them away from the city and into the suburbs.

Sam’s the one that breaks it. “That happen a lot?”

Lena shrugs. “Now and again. It’s better than it was in Metropolis.”

“You mean there’s been worse? Than _ that _?”

Lena laughs dryly. “Did you read about how Siobhan and I broke up?”

Sam takes a right turn down a residential street. “I think… TMZ said you cheated but People Magazine said you got her fired.”

“Right. I’m not surprised. No, someone broke onto set and pepper sprayed us, and I guess that was the last straw for her.”

Sam hisses. “Damn, that’s messed up.” 

“Still, honestly, it could be worse.”

“How the hell does it get worse than that?”

Lena drops her chin to stare at the coffee-soaked napkins in her hands. “I mean, I could’ve been the one who helped Lex get a controversial cancer treatment that killed six hundred sixty-two people FDA-approved.”

“Um… Do you mean… You didn’t like…?”

There’s a much different silence hanging in the car between them this time, and Lena’s skin prickles with vulnerability. Why did she even say that? Why did she even bring this up?

“No,” she says, blinking past the stinging in her eyes. “No. But I might as well have.” 

Sam pulls them into the driveway of the pale green two-storey bungalow and cuts the engine, but she makes no move to get out, just crosses her arms and turns to face Lena more directly.

“Why do you say that?”

“It means he asked me, back then. When you and I graduated, he asked me to help him finalize the project he was working on and I… I didn’t.”

“Lena, babe, I’m not following.”

Lena clears her throat and stares resolutely forward, jaw taut. “I didn’t help him, so I might as well be just as responsible as he is. All he asked was that I look over his trial results, take a couple weeks and give him my thoughts. All he wanted was my perspective on it and… I can’t help but wonder if, perhaps, had I not been so busy running around the country with someone who didn’t even love me back, then maybe he wouldn’t have paid off that—”

“Lena,” Sam interrupts firmly. “Sweetie, you can’t torture yourself like this.”

Something bitter within Lena, something dark wanted to spit back _ watch me _ , wanted to yell _ who’s going to stop me? _

Instead she musters up a placid smile, wipes some stray coffee from her face. “Come on. Enough of my sob stories. Let’s go inside and talk terms.”

xx

“Alright, thanks Jack. I’ll let her know… Yep, bye.” Sam is pocketing her cellphone when she reemerges into her living room. 

“I’m not usually known for my optimism, but that sounded like a good _ I’ll let her know _,” Lena says, tucking her legs underneath her on the couch.

Sam laughs and drops beside Lena. “Yes, it was. I seriously can’t believe it was that easy, but he did say yes. _ But. _” And here Sam holds up a hand to postpone Lena’s excitement. “There are conditions.”

“Yes, I’d imagine.”

“You have to fill out an actual application. You know, formally. Send him along your CV, list all the research projects you’ve been involved with, both undergrad and grad. Have you worked on anything since?”

Jaw clenched, Lena shakes her head. “No. I mean, some acting, but nothing relevant.”

“That’s fine, don’t worry about it, I just wanted to double-check. What was your dissertation on again? ”

“I wrote a quantitative analysis on cell decision processes in response to inflammation and their role in mediating genotoxicity. Which, is sort of relevant, I suppose.”

“You’re kidding, right? That’s completely relevant. You already know, the department I lead in is responsible for furthering research on carcinogenesis, but my team right now is working on putting together a formal set of conditions on genetic risks for cancer.” Sam waves her hand. “You’ll fit right in. Just send Jack your dissertation, along with your CV.”

Lena inhales gingerly as she nods. “Okay. What else?”

“The hours aren’t going to be… the best. We’re already at our quota for personnel, and funding is stretched pretty thin as it is. So, he can only afford to—”

“How much do you need?”

Sam blinks. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not worried about payroll, but if you’re short on funding, I don’t want to add to the problem. I know you’re cashing in on a huge favor to even get me into this, so.” Lena folds her hands in her lap. “How much do you need?”

“Oh, I, uh, I mean, there’s not, there’s not really an _ exact _ amount, per se, it’s all, um.” Sam shakily gestures vaguely, pressing her lips tightly together. “It’s just—”

“I have an extra two million that I was planning to invest in one of Lex’s labs before… you know. Would that be enough? For now?”

Sam blinks owlishly at Lena, jaw slack. “F-for… For now?”

Lena nods simply.

Sam swallows thickly. “Yeah. Um, yes, I think… I think that might help. Just a bit. God, I’m fucking thirsty all of a sudden, you down to get a drink?”

And that was that.

xx

After the incident at the cafe, it doesn’t take much elaboration when Lena suggests they go to Roulette. 

Although that might have something to do with the whole “celebrity speakeasy” part, because on the Lyft ride over, Sam is buzzing in her seat with excitement.

“Oh, my God, do you think Kristen Bell will be there? Wait, no, _ fuck _, c’mon Sam, think bigger.” Sam presses her hand to her mouth, deep in thought as her leg bounces up and down, before she snaps her fingers and presses close to Lena. “Holy shit, you don’t think Béyonce is going to be there and I’ll have to pretend she entirely doesn’t exist and like I’m not dying to smell her hair, do you?”

Lena raises her eyebrows. “Somehow, I don’t think it’ll come to that.”

“Okay, thank God.”

“It’s really not that elite of a place, Sam.”

“Lena. You said that you saw Usher there two years ago. I think it just might be.”

xx

Aside from Sam enduring a profound bout of flirtation from Veronica, they don’t run into any difficulties to get Sam inside.

Although Sam does try to tell the bouncer in the alleyway about how her manuscript that researched prostate cancer in chimpanzees from 2015 became a viral Buzzfeed article. It had something to do with a guest lecture she gave at UCLA, in which she said “_ and the chimps kept getting dick — I mean, sick. Ha, can you imagine? No, sick. They got sick. I’m sorry.” _

The bouncer doesn’t show any sign that he cares and Lena just ushers them inside with a grim smile.

Given that it’s a Friday night, the club is considerably much busier than it had been on the two weekdays that Lena was there, and the ride up the elevator is cramped tight with other patrons, and despite Veronica’s ogling up and down Sam’s form, she does inevitably wave them in quickly to keep the line moving.

Luckily, it being so crowded and dark, Sam catches no sight of anyone particularly notable in her book as they cross the threshold of the club, and Lena’s starting to think maybe this wasn’t a terrible idea. On the other hand, they’re climbing the short staircase to the bar when:

“Wait, didn’t you say it was a bartender you were trying to impress the other night?” Sam asks much too loudly, and Lena scrambles.

“_ God _, keep it down. Yes, I did, and… yes, this is the same bartender,” Lena says as they round the corner of the wall and Kara comes into her sight.

In the same all-black attire, Kara stands behind the bar with a full, trembling shot glass. Balanced on her nose. There’s literally a shot glass of some clear liquor precariously swaying on the tip of Kara’s nose.

She looks like a fucking walrus.

Lena, naturally, swoons.

“I got it, I _ got _it, Lucy, don’t come any closer, don’t you dare take this from me,” Kara cautions her coworker loudly, face tight with a deep frown. 

The coworker, Lucy, stands a few feet away behind the bar with her phone trained on Kara, looking just as focused and infinitely more amused, making no move to stop Kara. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” is Lucy’s distracted response.

Beside Lena, Sam’s face splits into a grin. “Oh, please tell me she’s the one I think she is.”

Lena sucks in her bottom lip between her teeth, doesn’t take her eyes off Kara. “Yep. That’s definitely the one.”

Somehow, miraculously, Kara precisely jerks her head back just _ so _, and the shot glass tips forward, pours entirely into her open mouth, and just as the now-empty glass tumbles off Kara’s chin and spins through the air, her hand swoops down and snatches it before it shatters, and the few groups around the bar that were paying attention erupt in applause.

Chuckling, Lena claps along as Kara pumps her fists in the air and gives a theatrical bow to both the crowd and her coworker’s camera. There are shouts and calls for a repeat performance, but after wiping her wet mouth against her bicep, Kara just laughs loudly and waves her hand sheepishly, quickly sets back to work.

Lena and Sam don’t manage to find an empty seat at the bar itself, so they stand together off to the side where there’s a slight gap and enough standing room. Sam takes full advantage, however, of the time it takes for Kara to notice them.

“She’s very cute,” she remarks dryly, leaning close into Lena’s ear to be heard over the loud chatter.

“Shut up.” Lena swats at her friend’s shoulder. “And for the record, she doesn’t know who I am yet, so don’t say anything incriminating.” 

“Incriminating like, they’re calling your psychopathic brother a modern Walmart version of Napoleon?” Sam gives her a skeptical look and Lena scowls, but her friend quickly settles. “Sure. Your call, I guess. I think her knowing you’re a millionaire would just help to loosen up her panties, but whatever.” She frowns. “Millionaire? Billionaire? What _ is _ your net worth these days?”

Lena ignores the latter question pointedly. “Most everyone in this room is a millionaire.”

Sam glances around them with peaked interest. “Really? Maybe I should be talking to someone else then.”

Lena rolls her eyes. 

Sam turns back to check out Kara as the bartender rattles two shakers in the air simultaneously over her head. “But really. I get it. I would totally tell her I’m a freaking astronaut if it meant getting a free drink or some action that wasn’t PG-13.” Sam pauses before swiveling her head back to Lena. “Wait, _ are _ you getting free drinks? Because I know you haven’t been getting laid.”

Lena purses her lips. “Like, not technically. But sort of.”

“My god, you sexy little—”

“Lena!” Kara appears before them at the bar with a wide smile and Lena hastily pushes Sam a safer distance away from her. “I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again.”

“Really?” Lena lets out automatically. Sam snorts quietly, and Lena inconspicuously kicks at her leg. “Of course you would. I mean, of course I’d come back. Not to see you specifically or anything, but—” When Sam coughs, Lena cuts herself off and takes a quick breath before trying again. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Whipped,” Sam mutters under her breath.

“Sorry?” Kara asks over the loud room.

“Nothing,” Lena assures Kara with a smile. “Don’t worry about her, she’s obnoxious.”

“I am right here, by the way.”

Kara laughs before she holds a hand out across the bar. “I’m Kara, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Sam, and same goes.”

“I know you’re busy, so I won’t keep you,” Lena tells Kara. “I’ll just have the same as last time, and she’ll have a Hendricks and tonic.”

Kara nods curtly, adorably, and turns back to the bar.

There’s all but four seconds of silence, along with Lena’s quiet, “_ Don’t, _” before Sam bursts into laughter. “What did I just say?”

Sam makes a pitiful attempt to stifle her giggles into her hand, shaking her head. “Lena Luthor, I swear, I thought people got better at this with age.”

Lena glares.

“I’m not kidding, you had more game in college.”

“I _ have _ game.”

“Uh huh, I beg to differ.”

“Whatever, it’s not like — for all I know, she may very well be straight.”

Sam smirks. “Sweetie, look at yourself, you’re dripping sex appeal. ‘Til you open your mouth anyway. Besides, what’s that thing they say? About straight girls and spaghetti?”

Lena rolls her eyes and grumbles under her breath, “I so do not know why I brought you here.”

They migrate to one of the chairless high top tables off to the peripheral of the bar so they can talk more easily, and spend the next hour or so intermittently catching up on what they’ve missed in each others’ lives since graduation. It’s over the course of this conversation that a prickling nausea begins to creep up Lena’s throat. It’s hard to understand where it comes from, and Lena rubs her collarbone uncomfortably as she keeps up with Sam’s story about how Ruby was inexplicably convinced she was a skeleton from Halloweentown when her first baby tooth fell out. Lena is contemplating if maybe she ate something questionable that day when it hits her; this shallow, hot chill down to her stomach isn’t nausea at all but rather guilt.

Loud, sticky, squelching guilt.

“Hey, um.” Lena reaches across the dark table to drape her hand over Sam’s. She quickly loses her bravado, though, and stares back at Sam, lost.

Sam just smiles, a little sarcastically. “Yeah, babe?”

“I just… I just wanted to say that, um… Look, I—”

“Save it,” Sam assures softly, twisting her hand over to grasp Lena’s fondly. “It’s okay. The phone works both ways. If anything, I should’ve been the one to call you, _ especially _ after what your shit show of a family got up to. So, I’m sorry.”

She won’t cry, not here, not now, but a brief warmth envelops Lena.

Sam’s phone starts ringing before Lena can properly respond to that heavy of a sentiment, and at first Sam moves to ignore the call, but upon reading the caller ID she quickly apologizes to Lena and steps away, leaving Lena alone with her drink and thoughts.

She hadn’t quite meant to lose touch with Sam, hadn’t actively let her go from her life. But it was all just a whirlwind of being swept up into this universe that Lena had always been on the outside watching. Growing up, Lex had been a darling at parties, had stood tall and confident beside their father at banquets and award ceremonies. “_ We can’t very well just bring anyone we like _ ,” Lillian had told Lena when she was a young teenage girl, watching the older woman stick pearls into her ears with an Emmy invitation in hand. “ _ You’ll just have to wait until next year _.”

Then Lionel had died, and there were still only two invitations to everything, and the excuses became, “_ Lex has a reason to be there with me. He’s doing something with his life, taking over your father’s research. What are you? A college student? Should we bring along your entire graduating class too _?”

Meeting Siobhan three years into her PhD meant trying a jager bomb for the first time on a Tuesday night, it meant cocktail parties with casts of unknown indie movies, it meant tickets to Sundance and weekends in SoCal Airbnb’s filled with nothing but sex and indulgence, champagne and clouds. Meeting Siobhan meant opening doors she didn’t know were closed and meeting rock bands that wanted her to be their face of their new single. It meant being recognized, being seen and taken inside the glass door. It meant being allowed in a place like Roulette, because suddenly people knew who she was, even if it was for who she was sleeping with rather than anything she herself has done. Because what did all her studies and genius get her? 

It’s funny to wonder how things might be different if she had never followed Siobhan in the back of a van from film set to film set, concert to concert, party to party. Maybe she would have helped Lex, and maybe all those people wouldn’t have died, but more likely is that she wouldn’t have been any smarter than he to notice the faults in his formulas, and nothing would be different. He still would have bribed an FDA official to speed along the certification process in order to get on track at becoming the youngest two-time Nobel Prize of physics winner. It wouldn’t have mattered, maybe, because Lena would still just be the sister of the most hated man in the country, would still be seen as the enemy, as an outsider, as someone who doesn’t belong.

Lillian was perhaps right all along. She wasn’t notable, still isn’t particularly. She hasn’t done enough of anything to warrant being a _ somebody _ . Staring into the bottom of her martini, Lena sucks in her bottom lip and thinks maybe that’s about to change. What she’s about to do with Sam, it’s objectively _ good _. It’s something Kant and Socrates would approve of, hopefully.

She’s making something of herself, isn’t she?

Sam rushes back to the table with a grim, apologetic look on her face. “So. Ruby had a nightmare, apparently she had too many Oreos before bed or something, and is begging to come home. I’m sorry to call our night short like this.”

Lena waves her hands. “Of course, don’t even worry about it, go get her. I’ll settle up here.”

“Yeah? You’ll settle up? Or will your, ah, new friend over there take care of it?” Sam wiggles her eyebrows suggestively.

“Good_ bye _ Sam,” Lena emphasizes with a laugh, pushing Sam away towards the exit.

“Alright, be like that. Listen, send your stuff to Jack, and we can meet up Monday to discuss everything more. I love you.” Sam leans back in quickly to press a chaste kiss to Lena’s cheek, pulling her close for a brief hug, before she’s bouncing away with a called goodbye over her shoulder.

Lena takes Sam’s half-empty glass and her own back to the bar, noting an empty seat by the far end of the bar near the wall. Might as well finish her drink at least, it’s not like she’s had qualms about drinking alone at Roulette before.

Kara doesn’t come by for a while, and Lena finds herself folding napkins mindlessly as she works through her cocktail, humming under her breath to the beat of the music. She’s not sure how long it is before Kara does finally appear with an open expression, bemusedly taking in Lena’s sloppy paper cranes. 

“You know I hear that if you fold a thousand of those, you get a free wish,” Kara says as she wipes her hands with a rag. 

“Traditionally, I suppose,” Lena agrees. “It’s also a symbol of hope and… healing.”

(Why does she hesitate, why does she pause? Why does she glance up shyly at Kara like she’s fishing for a specific response?)

Kara just smirks in return. “I’ll make sure to keep them safe, then.”

She’s not sure what answer she was hoping for, but it couldn’t have measured up to a response like that anyway.

“Did your friend take off?” Kara asks, gesturing to the unfinished gin and tonic beside Lena.

“Yes she did, had something to take care of.”

“But, you’re staying, right?” Kara says this with a downward lilt like it’s the punchline to a joke, but Lena can’t deny the rush of glee that threatens to break across her face, that silly teenage crush rearing like a sick puppy.

Lena’s ensuing grin is probably nowhere near as stifled as she thinks it is. “Sure, Kara. I’ll stay a bit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am not a scientist. took gen chem my freshman year of college and that is all i got going for me. check out MIT’s dissertation database if u want actual mf information abt that nonsense
> 
> coming up next week is entirely kara/lena so stay tuned kids


	3. slowing down i look around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a maybe not-so-inevitable goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this wasn't supposed to be 10k but here we are

**** When Lena says _ sure Kara, I’ll stay _, she means that she’ll stay another half hour or so, perhaps one more final drink before she leaves by midnight, one at the latest, per her usual routine. Because Lena has been pretty into the idea of a routine, lately, something to keep her busy and grounded. It’s about stability, something she hadn’t realized that she desperately craves.

So like, Lena’s not quite sure what exactly compels her to stay another five and a half fucking hours, but she does.

It starts like this:

Lena finishes off her first drink, licking the last drop of the sweet whiskey from the rim of the martini glass, and Kara is making her way back down to where Lena sits. Given that she’s sat at the end, it’s also where there happens to be a gap between the bartop itself and the wall, the exit and entrance to behind the bar for Kara and her coworkers. This isn’t something Lena would normally pay attention to, hasn’t given much thought to it until now, especially since she prefers the monotonous safety of sitting somewhere in the middle. 

But it comes to her attention now because it means that rather than leaning across the sticky bar to hear each other over the loud conversations, rather than existing with this inevitable, necessary barrier between them, Kara can actually stand to the side of Lena at this end corner. Homoerotic bells are banging like cymbals in Lena’s skull when Kara comes to stand beside her. The bartender crosses her arms, her elbows resting on the hardwood, and the tendons of her forearms twitch in the red glow. Maybe Lena should reconsider getting that vibrator.

“I’ve got about fifty seconds before Lucy realizes I’m gone,” Kara confesses with a deep inhale like she’s trying to catch her breath.

“Guess I better make them count, then,” Lena says in return, and, oh yeah, she might be completely in love with herself for how smoothly that falls from her mouth. 

“I guess so.” Kara laughs.

Lena chews on the inside of her cheek, forcefully dragging her eyes away from Kara’s arms and up to her face, the strain of her jaw, the slope of her dark smears under her eyes. “You seem exhausted, how long have you been working?”

Kara shrugs. “Ah, it’s what, a little after eleven? So about five hours, give or take.”

Lena sarcastically pushes forward Sam’s abandoned drink in offering, but Kara waves her hand. “Thanks, but I actually don’t drink.”

“Didn’t you just take a shot like, an hour ago?”

“Ah, jeez, you saw that?” Kara ducks her head with a sheepish laugh. “Yeah, no that was just water. My sister is the actual pro at that. I mean, she was.”

Lena’s brow immediately furrows. “Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t—”

“Gosh, no, I don’t mean like — she’s not dead or anything. She just, she doesn’t drink either. Anymore.”

“I see.” Lena struggles to not let her morbid curiosity show on her face, and she likely does a terrible job, so she clears her throat and summons a smile to ease the rather serious look that crinkles Kara’s forehead together. “Well don’t worry, I can easily drink enough between the both of us.”

Kara’s laugh is definitely one out of pity, because Lena is cringing at her insensitive joke, but the moment passes, and Kara pats her hand with finality against the bar. “Better keep ‘em coming then. You’re having another, right?”

Lena’s nod is much too eager, but who’s paying that much attention anyway?

So Lena stays a little while longer, has that second drink. Somehow, despite it being busier tonight, Lena finds herself with just as many of these stolen moments with the bartender where she quickly catches up the line of the bar and takes half a minute to make unweighted small-talk with Lena. 

One thought that lingers at the back of her mind throughout the night is that Lena’s not really sure why _ her _. She’s not the only regular, if she can even qualify herself as such. There’s a high-end fashion designer and his graphic designer wife that are friendly enough with Kara to warrant the bartender squealing with glee before she rushes around to give them a hug hello. There’s an actress with impeccable eyeliner that stands next to Lena as she orders her drink and asks Kara why she hasn’t seen any new Instagram posts of Kara’s cat — which, Lena didn’t even know Kara had a cat. Not that she would, because that is precisely her point: she does not know Kara very well.

Or like, at all.

Lena’s just learned Kara has a sister, she already knows that she likes to tell jokes and knows her basic scientific terms. And she’s got some elite college-kid party tricks up her sleeves. Sleeves — which reminds Lena — like the ones hugging Kara’s thick biceps. Lena’s fairly certain she can add to the list that Kara probably works out. A lot.

Lena shakes her head. 

Right, the point.

It’s just that, Kara’s clearly been here for a while, and there are customers that know Kara much more intimately than Lena would. Yet, somehow, when the cheeky bartender has a moment to spare, it’s not any of them that she goes to when she’s thought of a new pun, when she wants to sneakily rest for a moment by inconspicuously leaning against the bar. It’s Lena. And she can’t really put her finger on why that is.

In all honesty, it’s probably because Lena keeps throwing money at her, and, well. Like Sam said, who wouldn’t kiss up to a millionaire that was a bit too loose-handed with her cash, all too willing to spend it on a pretty face?

Not that— 

She’s not just overtipping and sympathizing with her exhaustion because she’s stupidly fucking attractive, Lena’s not that shallow, at least she hopes not, but she just...

Oh, whatever.

This light-hearted back and forth swing of Kara coming and going from their little nook, the patrons at the bar rotating in and out with Lena stagnant lasts for about an hour and a half. Lena stops building the paper cranes because she was gathering far too many and it’s absolutely a waste of product, and also because after one of them gets spilled on by a knocked over beer, Kara gets madly devastated and scoops them all up to keep behind the bar.

“For safekeeping,” she promises with a wink.

So Lena passes the time by conceding to checking her social media. She starts with Snapchat, because it feels like the safest platform to peak at without drowning in death threats, but seeing the stories of friends that no longer speak to her, broadcasting their Friday night parties and celebrations back on the east coast, it just makes her homesick for a place that no longer exists for her. She quickly switches over to Instagram, drops a few likes and goes nowhere near any of her mentions. But as she brushes through her feed, catching up on what she’s missed over the last two weeks, something pulls her attention and she hastily scrambles back up the page, halting forcefully on a post of two girls kissing.

Siobhan. It’s Siobhan and — somebody, God, Lena doesn’t even know who. They’re standing on the balcony of Siobahn’s penthouse in Metropolis with the sunrise behind them. This mystery girl is blonde and a good few inches shorter than Siobhan, and Lena _ refuses _ to think that this girl is everything Lena isn’t, but the way they’re wrapped up in an old throw together and kissing sweetly, the way the caption says _ sweet early mornings with my sweet girl _ , it’s all too much. With shaking hands Lena goes to tap the picture and find the tagged profile of the other woman, but she — _ of fucking course _ — accidentally double-taps and likes the picture instead, and Lena lets out a ragged, dramatic gasp at her mistake before she drops her phone entirely.

Kara is suddenly in front of her with furrowed eyebrows. “Hey, be gentle with the tech, it might control us some day.”

Lena stares back at her blankly. “I… what?”

“Never mind. You okay?”

Lena looks away shyly, picking up her phone and wiping off her dark screen with the sleeve of her shirt. “Yes, yes I’m fine.”

“You sure?” 

Lena looks up to meet Kara’s gaze, and softens slightly. “I… may have liked an Instagram photo that I shouldn’t have.” 

“Like, you were way too deep into stalking someone’s profile, or is this an ex-type situation? Oh man, or both?”

“The second one.”

“Ah.” Kara frowns and lifts a hand to stroke her chin, deep in thought. “Is it too late to block them?”

“Probably.” Lena has 3.6 million followers and Siobhan has over twelve, so she wouldn’t be surprised if there are already countless sightings of the one-sided interaction.

“You could always deactivate your account,” Kara jokes. “I did that with my Myspace page in middle school once after this kid Bobby said my profile song sucked.”

Lena pauses. Blinks rapidly, picks her phone back up.

“...and like, honestly? It was a good song, he was totally just jealous that his parents wouldn’t let him have an account. I can’t believe I threw it all away for him. He was such a dweeb, you know?”

“Okay. It’s done.”

Kara tilts her head cutely. “What’s done?”

“My profile,” Lena sighs, letting her shoulders sag in relief. “I deleted it.”

“I’m sorry, you what? Lena, I was kidding.”

“I know.” Lena pushes her phone back into her purse and runs a shaky hand through her hair. “But it actually was a good idea. I don’t use social media much, anyway. And she’s probably already seen that I liked the picture but…” Lena exhales. “Fuck it.”

Kara slowly smiles. “Alright, yeah, cool. Eff that.”

“Fuck, Kara. I said fuck.”

“Yep, that you did.”

Lena smirks. “You can say it, I won’t tell anyone.”

Kara jerks a thumb over her shoulder with a sheepish expression. “I’ma get back to work actually, so…”

“Coward.” Lena laughs when Kara backs away defensively.

An hour and a half somehow turns into two and a half, and it’s after 1am.

It starts slowing down a bit finally, and so Kara no longer needs to stand less than a foot away from Lena in order to be heard. Which, of course, Lena resents, because now that she knows Kara smells like coconut shampoo masked by the splatter of beer and liquor, she’s bitter to go back to talking over the boundary of the bar between them.

“So, you and your friend seemed pretty close,” Kara says as she’s wiping down liquor bottles from the well. “Sam, you said? How do you two know each other?”

Elbow on the bar and jaw resting in her palm, Lena stirs the cocktail straw around her drink. “Yeah, we are. We’re going to be working together soon actually. I hope, at least.”

“So you found that work then?” Kara’s eyes light up, and Lena remembers that she had told the bartender she was in between jobs and that this hadn't technically been a slight lucky scheme built on a white lie.

“Yes, it all worked out,” she says, choosing her words carefully.

Kara hums. “And are you two… I just mean, you seem very close,” she says again, this time with a more meaningful drawl and fluttering eyelashes.

Lena snorts once she realizes what Kara’s asking, covers her mouth to hide her mouth. “Sorry, uh, no. God, not like that. We met back in grad school, and I adore her but… no. We’re just friends.”

This is around the time when Lena starts to be feeling pretty good about her gaydar judgements, clearly having dropped the right kind of hints that she isn’t straight, and the fact that Kara herself acknowledges it is probably a good sign. Right? God, maybe Sam was right, she really is out of her flirting game. What she used to _ love _ about this back-and-forth tug seems so fleeting and unsteady, because how the hell does someone tell the difference between a straight girl being nice and someone who wants you to notice them as much as you do?

Lena orders another drink.

She might be on number five by now. Six? Who’s counting, and besides — she glances at her watch — it’s been over the course of four hours, so this is easily not the worst she’s done.

Wait— 

Lena pulls her phone from her purse hastily, and yes, her watch is not lying to her, it’s indeed 2 fucking a.m. When she spins and turns around herself, she sees that the crowd has thinned out considerably and only a few other people remain at the bar, and the dancefloor has dwindled down to only the sloppy late-night drunks that haven’t yet realized the party’s long over.

“Kara, oh my God, I can’t believe I kept you this long, I’m so sorry.” Lena is already fumbling for her wallet, digging through her purse.

“Huh? Oh, don’t be sorry.” Kara laughs at Lena’s distress. “It’s nice to have the company. Last call isn’t for another hour anyway.”

Lena pauses. “That late, really?”

“Mm, yeah, but if I’m good at starting my side-work early, I usually can get out of here pretty quick.”

Lena glances around herself once more. There _ are _ still people here, she supposes. Even if she left, Kara and her colleague would still have to wait for everyone else to leave. 

“Well. Suppose I can’t very well leave you alone like this, can I?” 

Kara grins. “Guess not.”

And that’s kind of just how it happens. Lena didn’t intentionally mean to dawdle for five and a half hours, didn’t expect to be here so late into the night that it’s practically morning when she suggested the place to Sam. 

It’s just, Kara has such a sweet, gentle smile that Lena can’t quite remember ever being on the receiving end of before. It was never like that with Siobhan, no, she was all teeth and cheap thrills, and some not-so-cheap thrills in the form of something powder and white caked up her nose. The notion of anything sincere coming from Lillian is absurd in and of itself, and Lionel wasn’t much a man for facial expression to begin with. Although there was the occasional drop of a hand on her shoulder and a curt nod that meant about as much as a tight hug and a murmured _ I’m so proud of you _ would have conveyed. 

And it’s probably cheating, what Lena’s doing. Greedily sucking in this kindness like soda from a straw simply because it’s being made available to her, because the one person in the world who’s willing to give it to her is possibly the only one who doesn’t know who she really is, doesn’t know where she comes from.

Lena’s spent so long being selfish, so self-indulgent with her cravings and urges, and now — God she’s _ trying _ to be good, trying to do something new, turn over a new folium or whatever, but who can resist a face like that? A smile so bright, in a world so grim. Lena’s always been deathly afraid of the dark, and now she’s living in it, shivering. So what if she chases after what few pinpricks of light shine their way through the blackness?

It’s not until the last person has left and Kara’s wiping down all the high top tables around the bar that Lena asks, again, “Are you sure it’s okay that I’m still here?”

Kara chuckles, tucking her rag into her back pocket. “Yeah, ‘course it is. Lucy doesn’t care, do ya Luce?”

Behind the bar, the other brunette bartender doesn’t look up from where she’s sweeping the floor. “Don’t give a fuck. Can you hurry up?”

Kara beams. “See? All good.” Kara squeezes passed Lucy and makes her way to the register at the opposite end of where Lena sits.

Lena hears the heeled clicks on the floor of someone approaching behind her, and then a low, familiar voice. “So, this is who you keep coming back to see then?”

When Lena turns, Veronica is coming up beside her, and the tall woman nods her head faintly over to where Kara stands behind the bar licking at her thumb, counting a thick stack of bills.

“You didn’t actually think I was here for you, did you?” Lena raises an eyebrow teasingly, a small smirk.

Veronica hums quietly, eyes scanning over Lena with a rather serious expression. “Just be careful, yeah?”

“What, with Kara?” Lena laughs at the notion. “Don’t tell me you have a soft spot for Little Miss Sunshine.”

Veronica levels Lena with a dry look. “No,” she says quietly. “But I do have one for you.”

Lena’s smile falters, her eyebrows knitting, and she opens her mouth to respond, to dig at Veronica’s cryptic notions, because they were never really friends even in high school, but nothing comes out. And then Kara is coming up to the pair of them and handing an envelope filled with cash and a bundle of receipts across to Veronica. 

“Pretty good night, I’d say,” Kara reports, then glances between the two. “You guys know each other?”

Lena’s stomach churns, because, please, no, she’d really rather now not be the time that Kara finds out her last name, and so she turns to Veronica with a poorly masked look of panic. But the woman is back to her same steely coyness, not meeting Lena’s pressing gaze.

“Yes,” Veronica replies coolly. “We go back a bit.”

“Oh. Cool.” Kara glances at Lena with a slight bewildered expression, very briefly, before back to Veronica. “Uh, Nia left early but her cut is in there. Am I all good to close up?”

After another chilling stare that stretches just a second too long, Veronica gives the okay. She then takes the heap of papers and tucks them under her arm, and without a proper goodbye she takes off behind a dark corner of the bar for what Lena assumes to be her office.

Once she’s gone, Kara chuckles and starts pulling her hair from its ponytail, raking her fingers through it. “She’s so weird sometimes,” she admits to Lena. “But she is actually pretty great to work for. But you probably knew that, being friends and all.”

Lena is currently too preoccupied taking in how Kara’s luscious caramel-blonde hair tumbles over her shoulders, how soft and sweet it must feel and, oh fuck, it must smell amazing. She gives a distracted, “Uh-huh,” and then she’s watching Kara’s fingers too, long and sinewy. Lena shudders to think what it might feel like to have those hands scratching back through her own scalp, to trail down her jaw and around her neck—

“Luce!” Kara calls out. “Come grab your cash and get out of here.”

Lena swallows, pulls at her collar a bit.

Kara rounds the bar to plop down onto the stool beside Lena exasperatedly, relishing in being off her feet after such a long shift as she pulls her own pile of cash towards herself. Lucy passes by the pair of them and zips up a thick leather jacket.

“See you tomorrow, girl.” Lucy presses a kiss to the top of Kara’s head and gives her a one-armed hug quickly and nods at Lena briskly on her way out.

“Sorry just give me a sec and then we can go,” Kara promises as she hikes up her foot onto the seat and unzips the side of her boot. 

“No worries, take your time.” Lena’s not even sure what she’s still waiting around for anyway. It’s 4 a.m. — as soon as they both leave here, they’re going to say goodbye and Lena will take a Lyft home, maybe walk Kara to her car first or something, pretend that she isn’t morbidly curious as to what Kara’s arms might feel like around her.

Lena takes a deep breath. And then she notices what Kara’s doing, which is stuffing the majority of her cash earnings into her boot, pressing it tightly against her white sock as she zips it back closed, and then tucking the last couple twenties into the front pocket of her jeans.

“What do you split it up like that for?” Lena asks.

“Oh, uh, it’s just like, a technique we use. Y’know, in case someone stops you on the street and asks for your money, just give them the smaller stash, and you still keep most your money. Win-win. Sort of.” Kara shrugs and hops up to her feet. “You ready?”

The walk to the service elevator for employees is quiet, Lena chewing on her bottom lip. It’s not like — well, yes, she was raised in a very pompous lifestyle, with boarding school and helpers and tutors and so much money that she doesn’t even know what to do with most of it now. Yes, she was probably neglected more than a young girl should be and she was so touch-starved for any type of affection at all when she met Siobhan that she cried the first time they had sex and locked herself in the bathroom for over an hour until she calmed down her quaking hands and panting breaths. But her family gave her fucking _ everything. _ Maybe her first car wasn’t as nice as Lex’s but it was still hers. Maybe it was to upkeep appearances and extinguish any suspicious talk, but she still only wore the nicest designers and saw the most reputable hairdressers. She was cared for, accounted for by somebody. Hell, it’s her family fortune that afforded her to simply set aside a PhD she spent four years cramming to finish only to dally around the country for over half a decade. Of course simply coexisting in tight spaces with Siobhan Smythe is a career all on its own, but she didn’t have a job, discluding the random acting gig here and there. But, being the girlfriend to a rising star like Siobhan, it felt more like playing dress up for fun than actually something professional.

“You alright?” Kara asks, prodding Lena from her thoughts as she reaches across and presses the elevator button for the ground floor.

Things are changing, Lena reasons to herself. Maybe she’s scattered and misguided, but hopeully, oh how she fucking hopes, that will all be different now. She’s got this new research, and if it pulls through then she has a home to call her own, untainted by painful memories or visceral associations.

And, glancing at the bartender beside her, who watches Lena with a thoughtfully attentive expression, maybe she has something else, something entirely new, too. 

“Yeah, I’m good.” Lena clears her throat. “Do you always stay this late?”

Kara nods. “On weekends, yeah. These guys seem to think we’re living in New York,” she says, waving around the small elevator as if they’re surrounded. “Some mornings I’m here until five or six.”

“Like when clingy customers overstay their welcome, you mean?” 

Kara scoffs and rolls her eyes, bumps her shoulder against Lena’s. “Oh, stop. You’re different.”

Lena’s eyebrows knit, and she’s reminded back to earlier, noticing how many regulars Kara must have, how many people to tell her jokes to.

“Why?” Lena asks hesitantly, almost shyly.

Kara looks sideways at her, tilts her head as the elevator comes to a stop. “For one thing, I didn’t have to peel you off the floor and call you a cab.” 

“Okay, but you know what I mean.”

Kara sighs, reaches out to push open a door and holding it for Lena. “I dunno, I mean, you’re just… nice.”

Lena raises an eyebrow as she steps out into the cold, hugging her arms around herself. “Are you calling the rest of your clientele something else?” she teases.

Kara rolls her eyes again fondly, buries her hands into her coat pockets. “No, I meant like, you’re nice to talk to is all.” She shrugs, stepping out of the alley and onto the sidewalk.

Lena doesn’t feel like she’s going to get a much better answer than that, but upon looking across at the bartender, how the yellow of the street lamps melts over her cheekbones and catches in the curls of her hair, emblazing it gold, she falters. Perhaps she’s being a little strange. She barely knows her at all, and for Christ’s sake they don’t even know each others’ last names. It’s hard to believe that just earlier that day, Lena was at a cafe with Sam getting a latte thrown in her face, much less that a week ago she didn’t even know Kara existed. Does Lena always have to push so earnestly? To press on matters that should be left well enough alone, at least for the time being?

Kara catches her stare as they walk down the sidewalk, and she scrunches her mouth to one side adorably. “I think you’re interesting, okay?” 

“You really like your ambiguous descriptors,” Lena remarks dryly, deliberately looking ahead of them. 

The other woman laughs. “Okay, fine, then how about you tell me this. Why’d you stay all night talking to me?” She waves a hand in a wide arc around them, across the empty street and over the buildings. “This whole city, of all the clubs and_ hysterical _ bartenders out there—”

“Pretty sure most of your jokes are from Google, but continue.”

“Of all _ that _,” Kara goes on with an exasperated smile. “Why are you here still talking to me?”

_ ‘You’re fucking hot’ _ and ‘ _ You don’t know who I really am’ _ aren’t the best candidates for answers to that question, although Lena does take half a beat considering the former option. They stop at the street corner down the block from the bar under an orange light.

Lena grumbles under her breath, tightens her arms across her center. “I like talking to you,” she admits.

“See? No better way to put it, you get me.”

Lena shakes her head with a quiet laugh. She takes one last look around them, taking in the quiet of the streets around them, how the shadows breathe and the cold dampens the noise of traffic farther than where they are now. A cab turns onto their street a few blocks away, heading in their direction, and Lena knows their night is close to its end.

She’s reluctant to even look at Kara as she says goodnight, the inevitable goodbye, but she does. Kara is looking down on her with the softest look of intrigue, as if she’s drinking Lena in as much as Lena is her. But it’s gentle, not prying or invasive. Lena hates the tug low in her gut, that pleasant squeeze of warmth clenching around her. She hates it because she knows it will leave her soon, she knows this is all fleeting, she knows she doesn’t know this woman before her at all, and she doesn’t know Lena, and Lena hates how perfectly easy she can breathe in a brief interim of long stretches of solitude.

“Right,” she breathes, the heat of her words forming a cloud between them. “Well, I guess this is—”

“Are you hungry?” Kara blurts.

Lena wavers in her train of thought, only blinks in response for a handful of seconds. Kara’s cheeks are pink from the chilly midnight air, and Lena is shivering at this point, but as she slowly smiles, she thinks that she can’t remember the last time she felt so _ warm _.

“I… could eat, yeah.”

“Cool.” Kara beams, bounces on the heels of her boots. “I know a place that’s open late.”

xx

The place Kara takes them to is only six blocks away, and it’s a 24/7 diner with a glowing green and red neon sign outside that reads _ Four Aces _ over a glowing hand holding four playing cards. A bell clangs over their heads as Kara holds the door once again for Lena, and the warm aroma of flour, sugar and coffee envelops them both immediately. Lena sighs into the atmosphere, rubbing her hands together and relieved to be out of the cold.

“Kara, what on earth are you still doing awake?” a middle-aged woman chastises immediately as they enter, meeting them at the entrance with crossed arms. “I swear on my life, I’m not sure you ever sleep.”

“She’s exaggerating, I sleep a lot actually,” Kara stage-whispers to Lena with a sarcastic smile.

“Don’t be a smart-ass.” The woman pats Kara on the arm. “Or I’m giving you the whole-grain waffles.”

Kara immediately tenses, no longer entertaining herself with Lena. “Rhea, you wouldn’t dare.”

The woman shrugs. “Don’t test me, kid. Now, you gonna introduce me to your friend, or should we all forget our manners?”

“Oh stop making me look bad.” Kara shakes her head. “Lena, this is Rhea, she owns the diner. Rhea, this is Lena, she’s a friend from work.”

Lena slyly glances up at Kara at that, and then quickly to Rhea, wondering if the other woman knows where Kara works, if Lena’s walked right into a sticky net of her own doing. She had already been skeptical about going anywhere more public than a deserted street or a speakeasy with Kara, the notion of a public restaurant being dangerously nerve wracking. But she couldn’t very well say no to pale eyes like those, not in the dimness of street lamps and a bare sliver of a moon low in the sky.

To her credit, Rhea shows no sign of caring much about Lena at all other than pleasantries, and she only shakes her hand warmly with a gracious smile before waving them off to sit wherever they’d like and a promise that she’ll be over in a moment.

Despite the late hour, the diner has a few other tables still, a few pairs and some by themselves, but it’s not nearly as empty as Lena had expected. When Kara leads them up to a booth by the window, an itch prickles at the back of her throat at how… visible they would be, on display like an art show to anyone that walks by.

“Oh, um, do you mind if…”

Kara pauses, glances back at Lena with a frown. “What’s up?”

“It’s, ah, colder by the window. Is it alright if we sit over there?” Lena gestures back to a booth further back, where they can’t be seen from the street and Lena can sit with her back to the rest of the room.

Kara shrugs like it couldn’t make a difference in the world to her and they take a seat where Lena’s pointed out. Though, after tugging off her bomber jacket and the hoodie underneath, she holds the sweater out to Lena in offering. 

“No no, it’s fine, keep it.”

“You’re shivering still.”

“It’s fine, really.”

“Lena, take the stupid hoodie.”

Lena presses her lips together firmly, wanting to not let her smile burst across her face like an adolescent, but she’s not sure she does the best job because Kara laughs as she accepts the black zip-up and pulls her arms through.

It smells faintly of the same coconut and lime shampoo as her hair — and if _ that’s _ not a creepy ass thought to have, Lena doesn’t know what is — but also something else, just a crisp, refreshing fragrance of someone warm, of something soft.

“Thank you.”

Kara nods and smiles back sweetly as Rhea comes around with only one menu for them and already sets a white milkshake in front of Kara, which she immediately digs into with a dreamy, excited grin. 

“How you don’t have diabetes yet boggles my mind,” Rhea mutters, shaking her head. “Can I get you anything to drink, hon?” she asks to Lena.

“Oh, um, just an herbal tea, please. Thank you.”

As Kara happily hums, her mouth otherwise preoccupied (don’t fucking say it, Luthor), Lena shakes her head endearingly. Alright, so of the list of things she knows about her, she can now add something of a sweet tooth to it.

“You and Rhea seem like you go back,” Lena notes.

Kara nods, takes a deep breath as she comes to for air. “Oh yeah, she’s known me since I was a kid. Gave me my first waitressing job, actually.”

“You didn’t start off at Roulette?”

Kara chuckles. “Nah, you gotta work your way up to a place like that. I worked here for a few years in high school, then up at this fancy Italian place on 33rd where I learned to bartend. And then before Roulette, I worked at a jazz club for a couple years, and the owner there knew Veronica pretty well, so when I was in a pinch for better pay he gave her a call.” 

“That’s pretty lucky. So you didn’t have to go to bartending school or anything?”

“No. I mean, I went to school, but not for bartending or anything. Well, Veronica requested I get a few certificates when I first started, but those are just formalities, technically, and you can get those from like, a two hour training session. I did have to sign an NDA, though.”

Lena’s eyebrows raise. “Really? What for?”

Kara gives her a droll look. “You probably know. It just says I’m not allowed to talk to anyone about anything that happens there with anyone who hasn’t been there themselves. Fight club and all that, basically.”

“Oh, is that all?” Lena asks with a laugh.

Rhea comes back with a white ceramic mug and sets it in front of Lena, tendrils of white steam wafting, with an ace of spades painted on the side.

“I know Kara’s order, but are you all set?” Rhea asks Lena expectantly, already pulling a pen from behind her ear.

Lena cringes, because_ oh _ how Siobhan used to agonize over how long it’d take Lena to decide on anything from _ anywhere _, and she hasn’t even given the menu a first glance, having been preoccupied talking to Kara, but Rhea is looking at her and her palms are growing sticky.

“Give the woman a second,” Kara mockingly objects, flicking her cherry stem at the business owner with a laugh. “I’ve been distracting her.”

“Oh I’ll give _ you _ a piece of something,” Rhea growls, reaching out to ruffle a hand messily through Kara’s hair, sending all those luscious locks chaotically askew.

Lena forces herself to use the quick chance to skim through the menu. It’s not like diner food changes much anyway, right? 

“By the way,” Kara interjects, reaching out to lay her hand across Lena’s menu. “Whatever you do, don’t get the oatmeal. Tastes like prison food.”

“Kara, I swear, one of these days I’m going to get your mother in here and give you a proper smacking.”

“Okay, but Eliza doesn’t like the oatmeal either.”

So, no blueberry oatmeal. With a wry smile, Lena thinks she can manage that. “It’s alright,” she cuts back in, closing her menu. “I’ll just have the eggs benedict, please.”

Rhea takes off with their menus, but not without flicking Kara in the forehead first and a faintly mumbled, “_ annoying little punk _.”

“She’s actually very sweet, I promise,” Kara assures with a grin as she straightens out her hair. But come on, Jesus, did the woman have to look good even completely disheveled? Lena loathes to think what she might look like in the morning when she gets out of bed. Or when she gets out of bed after— 

“She just likes to pretend she’s all tough and not happy to see me,” Kara continues. 

Lena shakes her head. “Of course, no, she does seem nice. It’s clear she cares deeply about you. You said that she knew you even before you started working here?”

Kara tips up the glass to tilt the last swallow of ice cream into her mouth, and when she sets the glass back down, there’s a dollop of whipped cream on her nose and a smear across her upper lip. “Yeah, I grew up with her son Mike, and he always used to be this major jerk to me — I’m talking like, he stole my Gushers and stuff, it was serious — and so she was always bringing him by to apologize for one thing another. Then she and Eliza, my adoptive mother, they became friends and it all just led to a job one day, I guess.” Kara shrugs, and she licks off the strip of cream from her mouth, but she wrinkles her nose adorably when she can tell she hasn’t gotten everything.

“This is pathetic to watch,” Lena murmurs as she reaches over with a napkin to swipe the mess away from her nose.

Kara laughs, that same gleeful, childish laugh she’d had on that first night Lena met her, the laugh she had been so drawn to. Lena takes in her crinkled eyes, that wide smile — there’s something so refreshing about someone so unabashedly themselves, someone so comfortable in their skin.

Lena can’t relate.

“But anyway, enough about me.”

Lena’s stomach drops.

“What about you? I know you said you’re doing some cancer research, right? How’d you get into that?”

There’s — 

Of course there’s an easy way to answer this, without lying, because there’s just obviously the _ truth _. It’d be so easy to tell Kara how she got to where she is, about her family, their prestige, how far back the line of their money goes and the depths of their research. There are all these answers swimming in her skull like chunks of a simmering stew, just one sopping, thick mess that has nothing to do with who she is, nothing about her.

Kara immediately backtracks at what must be a panicked look on her face. “Or not, you know, we can start somewhere simpler.”

After a nod, Lena sips her tea.

“You don’t have to answer this if you really don’t want to, believe me, I get the controversy around asking something like this.” Kara inhales sharply, meeting Lena’s gaze with a heavy weight. “But tell me… f you had to live off one kind of cuisine for the rest of your life, what would it be?”

Lena promptly snorts her tea. Kara throws her head back and _ laughs _.

“Cheeky bastard,” Lena laughs, wiping her face clean. “God, fuck you. Uh, what was the question? Food?” 

Kara nods cheerfully.

“Right. Um, I’m a big fan of Greek food, anything mediterranean. And you?”

“Easy, definitely Chinese. There’s this great dumpling place near my apartment, best pot stickers I’ve ever had. The family that owns it is from Hong Kong, and I swear — masters of their craft.”

Lena smiles. “I’ll have to check it out, then.”

“Oh yeah, I’ll take you sometime, don’t worry.” Kara waves her hand flippantly, as if it’s nothing to suggest that they see each other again outside of the bar, as if this is all going fine and that Lena isn’t melting on the spot and her cheeks aren’t burning. “But moving on. What’s the most embarrassing place you’ve ever cried?”

“Good God,” Lena grimaces, burying her face in her hands. “No way, it’s horrible.”

“Come on.” Kara pokes at Lena’s forearm on the table with a goofy smile. “Can’t be that bad.”

Of course it takes nothing more to persuade her. “Fine, but if you breathe a word of this to anyone, I’m suing Roulette.”

Kara raises her hands. “Fine by me, Veronica’s got good insurance. So, where was it?”

“I… may have cried at a Wendy’s, once. It was years ago, okay? And their Frosty machine was down, so. I was devastated.”

Kara is ecstatic at this news, hunches forward on her elbows. “Oh my gosh, really? Don’t get me wrong, I know an ice cream craving like nobody’s business, but _ why _?”

Lena purses her lips, fiddles with the tag of the tea bag hanging from her mug. “I mean, I’d had a rough day, and I might have been a little high, so…”

It takes four minutes to get Kara to stop laughing.

“Alright, so what about you?” Lena presses once the bartender clears the dampness from the corners of her eyes.

“Oh jeez, um, my best friend’s wedding probably.”

“Why’s that embarrassing?”

“Well, I was the maid of honor, and I am a _ very _ ugly crier. Like, snot everywhere, blotchy face, loud hiccups, the works. And… it was a very large ceremony.”

Lena smirks. “So what you’re saying is that there’s footage of this somewhere, right?”

Kara holds out a finger in warning. “No way, don’t even ask.”

“Please, you think I’d have to? I have resources, Kara.”

The bartender groans. “Ugh, whatever. Moving on. What’s one—”

“No no,” Lena cuts her off. “It’s my turn to ask you something.”

“Your turn? I didn’t realize we’re playing a game.”

“Yes, we are, and you started it.” Lena drums her fingers thoughtfully against her mug. “Hm. You mentioned you went to school, what did you study?”

Kara scoffs. “Lena, your questions are so boring.”

“They are not!” Lena laughs, realizes her cheeks are starting to hurt from smiling. “Answer the question.” 

The blonde sighs, licks her lips. “I studied journalism and global public health.”

“Oh.” Lena resists the sudden clench of alarm, because — it’s fine, she’s not actually a member of the press, she’s just a bartender, it’s fine, it’s fine. She clears her throat. “And, forgive me if this is rude but, how come you didn’t… pursue that?”

“You mean, why am I still working in customer service?” Kara laughs. “The journalism thing just hasn’t worked out yet. Someday, hopefully, but for now. Well. Bartending for National City’s most famous is a great gig.”

Lena tugs distractedly at the strings of Kara’s hoodie, twists it around her forefinger. No, she’s being neurotic, she knows that, but it’s suddenly difficult to meet Kara’s eyes directly.

Kara changes the subject, leaning forward onto the table. “What about you? You must’ve studied some cool stuff to be doing the research that you are.”

Lena forces herself to relax, to breathe, because somehow this is completely different than what Kara asked before. “I, um, yes. I suppose. I spent my undergrad on comp-sci and physics, but I did my MA on molecular biology before going back to get my PhD in biomedical engineering.”

A stretch of silence envelops them, only the faint sounds of clattering plates, clinking silverware, the hum of low conversation between them. And Kara, she gapes at Lena with her jaw hung low like a fish. _ God _, did she have to be so fucking adorable all the time?

“Holy crap,” Kara breathes. “Holy _ crap _, Lena.”

“Hm, thought I might get a real swear for that one.”

Kara ignores the comment. “How _ old _ are you?”

Lena scoffs in mock offense. “I’m only twenty-nine, thank you. I finished high school early, and my studies took about… a little over seven years? Give or take.”

Kara puffs out her cheeks comically. “Wow… I’m having dinner with a certified genius.”

Lena laughs again, her nose wrinkling. “I don’t know that I’d call this dinner.”

“That’s insane, Lena, your parents must be so proud of you.”

Her heart stutters again, reels to a halt, jumps, and Lena’s gaze flickers down. Lillian hardly qualifies as a _ parent _. “Maybe, but they’re both passed, actually,” Lena says with a flat smile, because it’s not really a lie, is it?

“Oh. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed like that.”

Lena waves her off. “It’s okay, I’ve long since dealt with it.”

Kara quickly jumps them back into their makeshift game of twenty questions, and Lena’s grateful. She’s not sure how many people would be so accommodating about skirting around so many sore topics, so patient about how private Lena is. Mind you, it’s because she’d rather not lie and there’s only so many questions she can vaguely answer without deceit, and so that’s why she’s secretive about any details that are far too revealing about who she actually is, but Kara is gentle and understanding without any need for elaboration. Of course it’ must be associated with the nature of her job, the nature of how they met, but Lena can’t help but sense it’s also an underlying quality to the woman herself, this forbearing side to her. They make more small-talk, continue on with this back-and-forth until their food arrives. Lena’s pleasantly surprised to realize how much you can actually learn about a person just through trivial things that no one usually bothers to ask about, things that Kara asks.

She already knew this, but she learns Kara _ really _ likes her sugar, that she can’t drink coffee unless it has at least four packets of sugar in it — brown, though, never white, she swears they taste different. She can’t stand any milk alternatives, and is vehement about the fact that oat milk tastes like chalky, diluted mud and almond milk is just white water. Lena learns that Kara’s favorite ride at a carnival is the bumper cars, that she thrives off the boggling echoes around her skull and the inevitable dizziness when she firsts steps out of the car, how unless she has the first inklings of a headache then she didn’t go enough at it. Lena learns that if Kara were to die in a freak accident, it’d probably be from eating Cheetos while driving, and the first responders to the scene would find the interior of her car splattered with the orange dust, and absolutely no one in her life would be surprised. Lena learns that Kara isn’t really a cat or dog person, she could never choose just one, but she has a cat because it used to be her neighbor’s, and the orange creature would escape into the hallway dozens of times and make its way to Kara’s apartment that constantly smelled of food, and Kara would play and care for the animal until the neighbor came by and collected him back again. Except, one day the elderly woman never came back, and the woman had no other family, and someone from the city came to pack up all her things and found no next of kin, so Kara considered no other alternative but to take the pet in herself. She recounts this story like it’s a set of consequential inevitabilities, like it’s something anyone would do, about as simple as lending a neighbor a cup of sugar, but Lena can’t help but melt in her seat at how soft-hearted and loving a person like that must be to not even think twice.

The concept is so foreign to Lena that it’s both remarkably extraordinary to meet someone like that and yet terrifyingly disconcerting to realize she can’t think of anyone else she’s surrounded herself with in the last seven years who is so kind, generous. There’s Sam, of course, who’s just as much of a force of good as Kara, but Lena can’t deny that she left her behind in what became a past life to chase after someone who just… wasn’t any of that.

Lena forcefully shoves Siobhan from her mind, into a box, out of reach.

In turn, Lena tells Kara that she’s never been one for sweets, and she’s never been to any sort of carnival or fair — both facts that completely appall the other woman — but she does have a weakness for blue raspberry cotton candy, and with how her mother used to treat this craving you’d think Lena had a guilty pleasure for shooting up heroin. Lena tells Kara that she can tie a cherry stem with her tongue, and Kara immediately scrambles up to the counter to harass Rhea for a small bowl of cherries to have the fun fact proved (which Lena does), how if she could only see one band live for the rest of her life it would probably be the Cranberries, but also has never seen a live Broadway show. Lena tells Kara about the time in boarding school when she, Veronica and some other girls snuck out after curfew, lit a bonfire on a beach where they drank until late into the night before heading to a rival school’s football field to spray paint their own school’s logo, and Kara teases her relentlessly. 

Their food arrives eventually, Rhea dropping off a glass of orange juice beside Kara’s plate and topping off Lena’s tea with more hot water. They settle into an easy silence, mainly because Kara’s busy devouring her stack of waffles and stuffing her face with berries sopped up in syrup. They eat quietly, enjoying their own meals, but towards the end a serious expression clouds Kara’s face and the bartender clears her throat.

“I really don’t… do this much,” Kara admits, elbows draped on either side of her plate. 

Lena sets her silverware down onto her mostly empty plate and looks back at her expectantly. “Go to diners at 4am with a stranger? I don’t either.”

“You’re a brat.” Kara huffs, and Lena smiles. “No, I mean, interact with people from work. Not the people I don’t actually work with, anyway, because I do hang out with them all the time. But like, you. People like you.”

“Ah.” Lena stares down at her mug, wondering if the inevitable question is coming, feeling the hairs on her arms tense and suddenly aware of her heart’s steady beat in her ears. 

“It’s not forbidden or anything, it’s just not something I make a habit of,” Kara goes on, waving her fork flippantly.

Lena goes to pick at the crust on her grain toast. “You seem pretty friendly with most of them.” 

Kara nods around a large mouthful of food and washes it down with a gulp of her juice. “Yeah, I mean, I’m pretty good at remembering people, and it helps to have regulars and stuff. But I’m not usually taking them out for a bite to eat afterwards.”

“Well, I imagine most people are ready to go to bed at this point.”

Kara laughs, her fork dangling from her long fingers. “Are you always this difficult?”

“Just when it’s fun to.” Lena shrugs. “And besides, you’re not taking me out to eat.”

Kara frowns, looks around them. “Then what do you call this, exactly?”

“I’m taking you out to eat. You think I’m going to let you pay for this?”

Kara’s ensuing groan is loud, and she runs her hands over her face. “Lena, c’mon we were having such a good time.”

“And we still are.”

“Nope, you blew it, because now we’re going to argue.”

“There’s no arguing about it. I’m paying.”

“No, you’re not. I literally invited you here, the rules clearly state that this is on me.”

“Rules change.”

“Lena—”

“You girls are so _ loud _,” Rhea interrupts as she clears their plates away. “Split the bill like a normal couple, for God’s sake, and leave me in peace.”

If Lena had been drinking her tea in that moment, it’d probably be splattered all over her front by now, and she’s positively certain that a sticky blush is swarming her neck and cheeks at Rhea’s word choice, but Kara doesn’t even bat an eye at the comment, moves past it entirely.

“Rhea, you’re supposed to be on my side. Eliza would back me up.”

The owner rolls her eyes. “No, Eliza would tell you to stop being rude and let this sweet girl buy you a meal. You work too hard, kid.”

Kara waves a hand dismissively. “Okay, you’re no longer allowed any input.”

Rhea holds her hand out to Lena, who already has her AMEX card out, and takes the black card wordlessly.

“Thank you,” Lena calls after her, and Kara throws her hands in the air.

xx

The inescapable goodbye does come, though. Lena can’t complain exactly, not when it’s pushing on after five am and there’s a certain pale glow to the sky that says sunrise isn’t too far now. The bell of the diner clambers over their heads as the two women step out onto the street, and Lena ties the belt of her peacoat securely around her waist while Kara rubs her hands together.

“Which way you headed?” Kara asks her, her voice low as if she’s reluctant to disturb the rare tranquility of a quiet night in the city.

Lena makes a vague gesture behind her. “Uptown, east side. What about you?”

Kara laughs. “Lower west side. I was gonna ask if you wanted to share a cab, but I guess that’s my answer.”

“Probably for the best. You’d just argue with me about who pays the fare anyway.”

“Ha,” Kara blurts. “So you admit we were arguing.”

Lena rolls her eyes and takes a couple steps backwards. “Yeah, I’m not up for a round two on this.” She smiles softly at the bartender, who’s blonde hair shimmers red and green under the hue of the diner’s lights, imagines how supple it must feel to graze a hand over those freckled cheeks.

“Have a good night, then, Kara,” Lena finishes, already turning away, because a Luthor is never the first to be left behind.

Lena makes all of two and a half steps away before there’s the crunching of boots over asphalt and Kara’s gentle lap of breath just behind her. “Lena, wait—”

No, she wouldn’t actually—

Lena turns, and Kara’s much closer than she expected and, oh, she’s got a few inches on Lena. Somehow she hadn’t noticed this yet, hadn’t realized that Kara looks down on her ever so slightly.

“Yes?” she asks, forcing uniformity into a voice that wants to tremble.

It’s so quiet out here, so brilliantly serene, that she both sees and hears Kara’s throat bob with a thick swallow.

“Is it okay if, I mean — sorry, I don’t know if this, like, crosses any boundaries or anything, um, I just, I was _ wondering _ if — if maybe—”

“Ask me,” Lena exhales, her chest hammering.

Kara’s eyes wobble, and it’s too dark to tell, too full of shadows to properly make out, but Lena thinks her eyes might be blue, gray perhaps, like the snow that’s sure to fall any day now back in Metropolis.

“Can I have your number?” Kara finally gets out.

Right, okay. Sure. Definitely exactly what Lena thought she was going to do, and by no means does her starstruck smile droop at the edges. Lena shakes her head, laughs under her breath to herself as she pulls her phone from her coat pocket. She’s being ridiculous, she wouldn’t even know what to _ do _ if Kara actually—

“Here.” Lena unlocks her phone to her contacts page and holds it out for Kara. 

Kara sighs, this actual relieved, adorable sigh, like she was holding her breath and can now let go, like after the last seven hours (holy fuck, really?) Lena might’ve actually had the gall to say no to something so small.

Of course, it’s not small, or insignificant, Kara probably understands. She must know better than most, with anyone that comes into Roulette, that her personal number on her personal phone (and not one of the many sidelines she uses for some middle ground) is extremely guarded, that not even most of Siobhan’s friends even had it. But Lena’s not the first celebrity to be private about her life, she reasons, something sour left behind in her mouth. Her thoughts start to prick at throbbing curiosity, and Lena wonders if what Kara said before was true, if she really doesn’t usually do this with every pretty actress that falls for a sweet smile and corny joke.

“Here ya go.” Kara hands her back her phone, smiles at her with this thick, closed-lip smile that crinkles the corners of her eyes.

It’s impossible to not feel special with a girl looking at you like that, Lena thinks.

“Text me so I have your number too,” Kara adds, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet.

Lena blinks away her nagging speculations. “Of course. I mean, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

Lena shrugs, moves to back away again. “Guess you’ll find out.”

“Oh come on, just send it to me — wait, wait, stop it.” Kara’s eyebrows knit in confusion and she reaches out after Lena, and her hand only faintly grazes Lena’s elbow, a polite, unprecedented touch if there ever was one, but it’s enough to immediately pull Lena back as if it were more.

Lena frowns with an amused smirk. “What now? I’m not giving you my autograph.”

Kara huffs. “Shut up, just, that streets sketchy.” She nods off in the direction Lena keeps trying to escape to. “Lemme get you a cab on the main street, okay?”

“I am an adult, you know,” Lena drawls. “I can get myself home just fine.” Though she is already following the other woman easily, mindlessly.

Kara rolls her eyes. “Just humor me.”

They don’t say much else, Lena figures the weight of exhaustion is laying heavier on Kara now. She can’t really imagine how the poor girl’s still walking and talking like this, still alert enough to navigate them and step out onto a street corner with a long arm precisely held out.

Nothing is said between them until a cab is pulled up to the curb and Kara is opening the door for Lena. “Go on, I’ll get the next one.”

Kara leans over with her arms on top of the door as Lena steps down onto the curb, and she glances back once at Kara, longing for — 

Something. 

Mostly, she wishes she were the kind of woman ballsy enough to press forward, drop a harmless kiss on Kara’s cheek. It would be nothing, it wouldn’t have to mean anything. Lena is anything but touch-starved these days, it’s barely been two weeks since she kissed Siobhan last, but standing under the weight of Kara’s velvety gaze, to be on the receiving end of that tender look, she can’t help but feel like she doesn’t know what it means to be touched at all.

“Good night, Kara,” she says one last time, and this time Kara doesn’t stop her.

“Get home safe.” 

Kara shuts the door for her, and after giving the driver the cross street for her address and he pulls away, she looks back through the window to see Kara give one slight, tentative wave.

Lena waves back.

xx

It’s not until she’s inside, when Lena is stripping herself of her stiff, wrinkled clothing, and dead set on sleeping for a month, that she notices she’s still wearing Kara’s hoodie. 

Lena doesn’t know what this is (Read: what the fuck she’s doing). With Kara, where she expects this to even go. Realistically anyway, how long can she keep this up? The longer she waits to tell Kara who she is, the more complicated it all is, the blurrier the gray lines become.

On the other hand… it’s nothing that can’t wait till morning.

Lena kicks off her slacks, tosses aside her maroon blouse and escapes from her bra, before pulling the warm hoodie back on and climbing into bed with a soft, sweet aroma tucking her in to lull her to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tomorrows sunday. good luck boys


	4. i'd be smart to walk away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> everything is absolutely f i n e.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cannot emphasize enough… i am just a speech pathology student. dont @ me on any of this science nonsense

She doesn’t text Kara.

It’s not like she doesn’t want to, like she didn’t enjoy their easy banter over sticky waffles and too-salty benedict, like she doesn’t think Kara’s mannerisms when she speaks are vibrant and that the way her tongue pokes out to lick at a dollop of whipped dream on her lip is painfully adorable. It’s not like Kara’s voice isn’t low and sweet like a spoonful of sugar stirred into a strong black tea, like Kara’s not patient with Lena’s secrecy or kind enough for her insecurities, like she doesn’t leave Lena starstruck and and full of wonder with every chance she gets to learn just a little bit more about her.

It’s the very fact that these are all true statements that leaves Lena breathless and paralyzed whenever she picks up her phone and considers texting her. There’s the urge to push it off, to wait, be coy and let Kara text her first even though that’s impossible if Lena refuses to actually give her her number. 

Because instead of being rational, Lena would rather stare contemplatively at the dim screen of her phone in the blanketed dark of her bedroom, late at night, where Kara has saved herself in Lena’s contacts as her first name, inexplicably followed by the female superhero emoji and the thrumming pink heart.

She gets enough satisfaction from staring at the keystrokes the woman typed out herself, right? She isn’t longing to learn what kind of texter Kara is, if she takes hours to reply or is instantaneous, if she types in long paragraphs or incessant bursts, if she capitalizes or uses punctuation, if she keeps it tame with things like  _ lol _ and  _ haha _ or if she’ll go to the extremes with  _ XD _ and  _ ROFL _ and make Lena reconsider the matter entirely.

No, she’s not curious at all. It’s fine.

She just spends the next five nights like this, and maybe a few mornings, and also like during lunch breaks with Sam when the other woman isn’t paying attention.

It’s hard to explain, really. 

So there’s this bubble, right? Just your classic, standard, organic bubble of the romantic variety. Lena’s got it perfectly crafted, all shiny and pink, encasing her and Kara. This bubble is where things still look pretty and endearing and everything stays safely in the  _ practical strangers _ domain but toes the line at explicit fantasies and soft gazes and entertaining what if’s. 

She knows it’s unreasonable to place this much weight on giving someone her phone number, someone who has verbally expressed that she actually wants her number in the first place. 

There’s just something safe about staying where she is, because how long does Lena expect to play this game anyway? She probably shouldn’t even pursue the matter, should stop going to Roulette altogether. This scenario only goes a certain way, Lena only has so much time before Kara eventually tries to Google Lena, asks what tier of stardom brought her through the doors of Roulette, figures out the inevitable truth. 

It’s not a lie, no, but it might as well be. Especially because Lena knows that when Kara learns who she actually is, she’ll want nothing to do with her. 

She’s not being dramatic or paranoid, it’s just the truth. The fact of the matter is that Lena doesn’t get this sort of story. At least not now. She’s not quite that bitter yet to think that love will be this forever elusive  _ thing _ , but it’s so far away into her future and intangible that it might as well be unattainable. It’s not something she gets while she’s still a Luthor, while she’s still this shadowy, malfunctioned copy of a person that hasn’t done anything remarkable or knows how to be a good person.

She doesn’t deserve the sort of love story she dreamed about when she was a kid. Not yet, not anytime soon, not with someone so bright, so untainted by her twilight.

xx

It’s fine anyways, because Lena only lasts six days in her self-deprecating martyr act before she goes to Roulette again. So maybe she’s a bit fragile, gets a little lonely — she’s only human.

It’s Friday, and she’s been working by Sam’s side all week now, just about getting a grasp on how things work around here, stretching her scholarly muscles and relighting neuronal pathways she hasn’t used in years. 

“I had a weird dream the other night,” Lena confesses early on in the day, arms crossed and leaning against the doorframe to the breakroom.

In front of her, Sam pours a splash of milk from the staff fridge into a white mug of coffee that reads,  _ Scientists: just regular, normal people… who are way smarter than you _ .

“Yeah? Still get those wet dreams, huh?” Sam asks.

“Oh fuck off. That was one time.”

Sam laughs, rinsing her spoon off in the sink before carefully plucking up the handle to her steaming mug. “Sweetie, you were in the shower with your vibrator for over an hour the morning of my lab practical. It’s not something I’m gonna let you live down.”

Lena makes a low, disapproving groan in her throat as they step out of the breakroom and make back down the hall towards the offices. “If you tell anyone about that, then I’m showing your staff all the pictures from your goth phase.”

“Okay, and? You had one too.”

“Yes, but I actually pulled mine off.”

Sam laughs loudly but sneaks a half-hearted punch to Lena’s shoulder. “You’re such a brat, anyone ever tell you that?”

“Nope, not once,” Lena answers coolly, but as they turn the corner she knows the red is curling around her cheeks, and Sam isn’t that oblivious.

“ _ God _ , I love how easy you are to read,” Sam gushes, spinning Lena back around so they stop in the hallway. “Please tell me it’s the cute bartender and not somebody new, you know I’m horrible with names.”

“Okay, yes, she called me a brat one time, let’s move on. God, you’re like a private detective.”

“So is that like, a sex thing? What’s the opposite of a praise kink?”

“Can I go back to work now?”

“No, sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry at all. “Tell me about this dream.”

“You give me whiplash.”

Sam scoffs as she loops her free arm through Lena’s elbow, tugging her into the communal office space. “I’m barely even awake right now, and it’s Friday, so get over it.” Sam sinks into her desk chair with a sigh of content. “So. Dream?”

Lena takes her seat opposite Sam at her own new desk, which is already overspilling with data and research she’s yet to catch up on to get up to speed on her new project. “Right. It was… odd, to say the least.”

“About the bartender?”

“Her name’s Kara. And no, it was about Siobhan.”

Sam makes a face. “Gross. You kill her or anything?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Hm, shame.”

“She just—” Lena chews on her bottom lip, pensive. “We were at my old apartment, in Metropolis, and she just kept asking me about this woman, asking me her name and who she was and where she was, and I had to keep telling her I didn’t know who she was talking about.”

“Meta.”

“And, she just kept asking me if I remembered her, like Siobhan was asking me if I remember herself, and she’s trying to make sure that I’ve forgotten about this other woman, but I don’t know who it is that I’m supposed to have forgotten in the first place. You get what I mean?”

“Not at all. Keep going.”

“And so, then we’re having sex—”

“ _ Ha _ , knew it.”

“—And like, I’m on top of her, right?”

“Okay, you know what? That’s so fake. You’re such a bottom.”

“And just all of a sudden, I start  _ crying _ , horribly, while I’m actually on top of her, and I’m panicking because I have to hide it, but I don’t know what to do with all these tears, but her eyes are closed so she doesn’t see, so I just have to keep wiping them away and swallowing them so that none drip onto her.”

“You really do have some fucked up kinks.”

“And then we’re in the doorway of her apartment, I think, but she’s leaving, and she’s asking me what this other girl’s name is, but I’m begging her not to leave because I don’t know who she’s talking about, but Siobhan’s telling me that she’s… God, what did she say? I think she said something like she’s tired of being settled with. And then she’s leaving, and I’m alone, and— Jesus, it felt like I was suffocating, but then suddenly I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t relieve the feeling. So I went back to my room, her room I guess, technically, and I get into the bed and stare at the ceiling and, in the dream, I close my eyes. And when I open them, she’s right there. Kara is, I mean, just at the foot of the bed, staring at me. And then I woke up.” 

Sam regards Lena with a contemplative frown for a long moment, one that stretches on and filled only with Lena’s shaky inhales of breath as she shakes herself free from the thoughts of the other night. 

Then Sam’s reaching into a drawer of her desk, and she slides a bottle of Black Label across the desk. “You really need this more than I do.”

Lena stares at the expensive whiskey for a moment, actually considers being the responsible type of person to reject it, but caves and twists off the cap. “So? What do you think it means?” she asks anxiously after taking a swig, clearing her throat of the burn that lingers.

Sam leans back in her chair, steepling her fingers together. “Think it means you’ve totally lost your marbles, to be honest.”

Lena rolls her eyes. “Helpful, truly.” Spinning back into her desk, Lena chews on her the inside of her cheek, staring blankly at her work before her. “It’s just that… I only just met this girl, and yes, she’s wonderful and kind but, I mean. I just got out of a seven-year-long relationship barely two weeks ago. What the fuck is so wrong with me that I’m already jumping at the opportunity to move on?” Because she’s not immune to Siobhan, not yet, still can’t let go of the grip on her shoulders that still _ cares _ , if her reaction to Siobhan’s post with a new girl is anything to go by.

Sam sighs. “Okay, listen. I think you’re overthinking the whole dream thing. But from the way you talk about it, what you and Siobhan had was pretty superficial anyway. Maybe it really ended a long time ago for you, maybe it never started, and this bartender chick—”

“Kara.”

“This Kara chick, she’s touching a nerve. Like, a sappy, cute, gay nerve. You’re not insane for having a crush, Lena.”

“Maybe I should have tried harder,” Lena mutters. “When Siobhan said it was over, I just stood there. I didn’t say anything, or do anything. You know, you’re right, I talk about her like I meant nothing to her, but in the end, for all I know, she was the one waiting for me to fight.”

“She didn’t even have your back, babe.” Sam’s pitying eyes are heavy and bore into Lena like icicles. “With everything that was going on with Lex, your family… you had enough on your plate already without having to perform against some reverse psychology bullshit from your girlfriend.”

“I just… feel guilty, I suppose. Seven years over, I don’t say a fucking word, and already I’m dreaming about someone else.”

“Okay, let’s try this angle: maybe this dream thing is just a sign that you need a rebound, and considering that this hottie is basically the polar opposite of Siobhan, it sounds perfect.”

Lena doesn’t know what kind of response she’s supposed to give that, because somehow getting involved with Kara in a way that’s only meant to be temporary is worse than the dream. So Lena lets out nothing more than a quiet hum as she turns back to her work.

“Just… stop psychoanalyzing yourself so much, okay? Have a little fun.”

The point drops after that, but something bitter squirms under Lena’s tongue. Still, she forces herself to stop feeling pathetic about her flaccid romantic life long enough to steer her focus back to her work. Sam heads off to the labs on the opposite end of the floor soon after, and a few hours later Lena’s joining her. 

Sam is just finishing up with showing Lena some of the lab test results they’d run through over the last few weeks on cell regeneration in a specific class of amphibians most closely related to mammals. It’s supposedly an angle her team had been working, how they might be able to manipulate the DNA sequences to regenerate cells that are fried in radiation therapy, but that trail of research on the project is currently at a standstill, and it’s where she’ll be focusing Lena’s attention. 

While Lena inspects a petri dish through a microscope, Sam chats aimlessly about her plans for the night to take Ruby to see a new Disney movie in theaters, and Lena makes some offhand comment about how she could really use a Xanax and a stiff drink after this, when: “Oh, holy Jesus mother fucking  _ shit _ .”

Lena, slightly alarmed but thoroughly entertained, lifts her head from her chin as Sam starts scrambling around their work bench to a stack of papers. “Darling, I can certainly share, don’t worry.”

“No, what? I just — wait, do you really have…? No, never mind, shit, shit. Look, I completely forgot I promised Jack I’d get this stuff delivered over to Lord Technologies today.  _ Fuck _ .” Sam groans, frantically stuffing a manilla folder under her arm and moving to clean up their equipment.

“Lord?” Lena echoes. “I thought Spheerical Industries stopped partnering with him years ago.”

Now on the hunt for the case for her titration pipette, Sam shrugs distractedly. “Um, technically yes, but not officially? He gives us access to some clinical data from his facilities, just numbers and figures on patients really, in exchange for any research we do on pharmaceuticals that comes from his company. It’s sort of under the table, I guess, but it’s not illegal or anything, Lord just doesn’t want to credit anyone but himself for the research. Anyway, I’ve been looking into what seems to be this weird new strain of a demyelinating virus that’s been popping up, and Lord asked us to see if any of his treatments are involved. So I had Marcus from the neurostats department make up an analysis cross-referencing reports of the virus with visits to a Lord facility, and I promised Jack I’d bring it over because  _ go figure _ that Lord doesn’t trust sending sensitive information over even a fax machine for fuck’s sake—”

Lena hops off her stool and waves Sam off. “Go, please, before you have a meltdown. I’ll take care of everything here.”

Sam hesitates, poking her head from behind the table where she’d been searching on the floor for the plastic case. “Are you… sure?” She shakes her head. “No, no, it’s fine, if I start now I can make it to Lord’s by seven and then I can get to picking up Ruby by eight at the  _ latest _ —”

“Sam,” Lena interrupts again, this time with a laugh. “I know how to run a lab, I saw Lex do it enough times.”

Sam’s eyebrows knit together, but Lena can tell she’s giving in. “How soon is too soon to make jokes about that, by the way?”

Lena blinks. “What, about Lex? I’ve been making jokes about him being the antichrist since I was seven, I don’t think they stop now just because it turns out to be true.”

“Okay, great. So, when you’re isolating all the chemicals tonight, you’ll do everything that Lex didn’t do, right?”

“Don’t poison anyone, got it.”

After shucking her gloves and disposable apron into the waste bin, Sam pauses one last time. “Are you sure you’re good here?”

“Yes, yes, now  _ go _ .”

With one last, overwhelmingly heartfelt thanks over her shoulder, Sam rushes from the lab, leaving Lena to clean up. 

It doesn’t take long or anything, and it’s not like she has anything better to do than return to an empty white apartment that still smells like a new car and eat Sweetgreen leftovers and finish off an opened bottle of merlot. Plus, she’s hands-on — she enjoys the opportunity to familiarize herself with the equipment again after all these years, relearn protocols and regulations for securing a lab. It’s mundane work that honestly an intern could do, but Lena knows it helps keep her grounded.

She’s nearly finished by the time ten rolls around, sitting in the dark of Sam’s private office with only the dandelion glow of her desk lamp illuminating her papers and the glare of the computer monitor. She texts Sam briefly for a few comments to put into the closing report, but other than that, she’s just about ready to pack up and head home when the office door is being pushed open.

“Yo Sam, bunch of us are headed to Murphy’s for—” It’s one of the researchers on the genome branch, Lena can’t remember his name, but he catches when he looks up from his phone. “Oh, Lena. Hey. Uh, is Sam around?”

Lena’s face is carved of stone as she shoves off the clench in her throat. “No, she had to leave early. What’s going on?”

The man shakes his head much too quickly. “Nothing, uh, don’t worry about it. See you Monday.” With a thin-lipped look that she supposes is meant to resemble a smile but looks rather like a grimace, he dashes from the room much quicker than he entered, and Lena is alone again.

If she was feeling reclusive about going home to her apartment before, she’s feeling downright nauseous with solitude now.

It’s not like —

Her new coworkers are nice. Polite. They introduced themselves with nods and plastic smiles, were happy to welcome her to their team, but they skirt around her like she carries something contagious in her lab coat. They don’t shake her hand, don’t ask if she wants anything when they make coffee runs, don’t sit at the same table in the break room as she does. 

She wasn’t expecting to make friends, it’s not like that. She didn’t start working here to become a social butterfly, and honestly she’s pretty used to being a pariah by now. 

Logically understanding and appropriately anticipating behaviors, though, does nothing to stop the sharp sting of something so trivial and adolescent as being left out of a fun night out.

It’s fine, she thinks to herself, standing and powering down Sam’s computer. It’s fine, it’s whatever. It’s not like she could even go to a public bar like Murphy’s anyway, she would’ve said no  _ anyway _ .

She runs from a thought that rises slowly, does her best to swallow it down before it even surfaces, but it scratches through eventually, once Lena’s in a cab and she closes her door off to the noise of the city.

How many times, even before everything that’s happened, did Siobhan actively used to ask Lena to wait for her back at their apartment while she went to a party, before she’d inevitably stumble in through the door at 1 a.m. with marbleized eyeballs and breath that stank of tequila? How many times did Siobhan imply that the people she’d be with that night wouldn’t be Lena’s sort of crowd when really it was blatant across her face that she was embarrassed to bring her girlfriend with her everywhere she went?

Lena clenches her jaw, closes her eyes, leans back against the leather seat, tries to shake off the restless reminders like a mosquito.

It wasn’t every time, no. She was a part of Siobhan’s world, of course, everyone knew they were together, it was never like that. But any new project that Siobhan started on, whatever new cast or director she was working with, in the beginning, she’d ask Lena to stay at home and let her go alone. She wanted to feel around for things first, make sure they were the kind of people to get Lena’s sense of humor first. Lena didn’t know what there was to get about her, she didn’t have much of a sense of humor to start with, but she accepted it, even convinced herself she understood. Of course, respect her boundaries, don’t be too pushy. 

Lena just had nothing better to do with her life but wait around for Siobhan to come home, and that’s not on anyone but herself.

Oh fuck it, wine just won’t do it tonight.

xx

She ends up at Roulette, because where else would Lena go?

It’s not even 11 yet, but the club is already dwindled down and only at half the capacity it had been last weekend. When Lena makes her way back through to the bar, she catches sight of Kara on her knees and stocking beers into a fridge.

No, she does not think about what else Kara could be doing on her knees, thank you very much.

“You chase everybody away?” Lena asks, leaning forward on the bar to peer over at the blonde.

Kara jumps slightly, whips her head around, but her face immediately splits into an enchanting smile as she adjusts her glasses. “Lena, hi. I — what?” Kara hops to her feet clumsily and looks around, sees the mediocre scope of patrons, and rolls her eyes. “I didn’t do anything, I swear. There’s just a film festival going on uptown that I think is keeping all the A-listers busy.”

Lena shrugs playfully. “I don’t know, did you remember to put deodorant on this morning?”

Kara scoffs, jaw agape. “ _ Yes _ , of course, I smell amazing.”

She doesn’t doubt it.

“I’m glad you’re here though,” Kara goes on, softer. “Even though all I’m getting so far is sass, because I have a proposition for you.”

Lena swallows thickly at the onset of nerves, scrambles to control her breathing. “What is it?”

Kara’s already reaching for the top shelf whiskey that Lena likes in her drink, and Lena’s tries to both wrap her mind around how she doesn’t even ask anymore because she just knows Lena will say yes,  _ and _ the probable fact that Lena’s whole identity is about to be put into question and this fun little game will come to a sharp, abrupt close.

Lena forces herself to breathe.

“So,” Kara starts as she tosses together the cocktail ingredients in a shaker. “I’m getting off at twelve tonight.”

The anxiety immediately starts to dissipate, and Lena smiles. “Oh?”

“Yeah, so my question… How good are you at pictionary?”

“Pictionary,” Lena deadpans. “Like that app, the Draw Something game?”

Kara beams, nods excitedly as she slides the finished drink across to Lena. “Yeah! Exactly, but in real life. Are you any good? I’m really terrible, and I could use a decent partner.”

Lena wavers again, mouth parted in confusion. “I… suppose I’m alright, I don’t know. But I’m lost, what are we doing?”

“Right, yeah, so once a month, my friends and I all request off the same night so we can actually get together for a game night because, gosh, it is so difficult to get everyone in one place at the same time otherwise. And I kick butt at stuff like Codenames or Jenga, but it’s just that pictionary is my one weakness.” Kara frowns very seriously for a moment before positively beaming at Lena. “So whaddya say?”

About halfway through that spiel, Lena takes a rather large gulp of her drink, easily half the small, red cocktail, and it’s hard to tell the difference between anxiety and the rush of liquor down her throat. “I, ah, I’m not sure,” she confesses tentatively, reluctant to do anything to diffuse that smile. “I mean, I’d hate to intrude.”

Kara, for her part, doesn’t falter, and waves a hand. “Please, it’s not a big deal at all, plus-ones are always welcome. It’s literally just a small group of us, and we’re an odd number this time anyway.”

Lena can’t help but wonder who it is that’s missing from the usual repertoire, but she bites her bottom lip, still evasive. “You guys are having a game night at midnight? On a Friday?”

“Oh, I wasn’t supposed to be working tonight. Barback called out, so I’m just here to help for a bit, and they’re all waiting for me.”

Lena quenches her dry mouth with another hearty swallow of her drink. “That’s… nice of them.”

“Sure, but I own all the boardgames. They have no choice either way.”

Lena grimaces. “You’re not gonna take no for an answer, are you?”

Kara leans back, crosses her arms with a pout. “I mean, I will, but I’ll be super sad about it, especially considering you still haven’t sent me your number.”

“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed,” Lena drawls with an elusive glance back down to her drink, but inside her chest is pounding. 

Kara’s lips pinch like she knows Lena’s being coy on purpose, and if Lena didn’t know any better she’d say the bartender’s cheeks look a little warm. “Yup.”

God, she can’t actually fucking do this, can she? Who the hell is even going to be there? And  _ where _ ? It must be Kara’s apartment, right? No, Lena cannot in her right mind go to this woman’s apartment, where she fucking lives. It’s one thing to flirt over drinks, or even trudge off down the street for a 4am meal and talk about things like food and their studies, but it’s an entirely other endeavor to go to where this woman lives. It’s… personal, it’s intimate. Especially considering they won’t be alone, Lena will actually meet Kara’s friends, which is something else entirely to wrap her mind around. Sure, they don’t have much of a routine, it’s only been two weeks since they met, but it feels like  _ ages _ , and Lena is comfortable in this bubble of isolation, of not being seen, of hiding from prying eyes. No, accepting this invitation is completely out of the question.

Also, like, of course Lena hasn’t texted Kara yet. What the hell would she even say? _Hey_? 

Struggling to stall, Lena forces a laugh. “You haven’t been waiting all this time by your phone, have you?”

“No! No, of course not,” Kara stammers, messes with her glasses again.

Lena’s shoulders loosen from their coiled tension, just slightly. It’s starting to feel like a felony to say no to a face like that. “So… you don’t want my number?” she teases.

“ _ Lena _ .”

She grins, a slow, red thing that spreads across her face. “Yes?”

“You’re being a brat again.”

“Mm, yes, I’m aware.”

See, this game is much more fun when it’s just them. She does enjoy spending time with Kara, and the prospect of playing silly games she doesn’t understand — and didn’t spend much of a childhood around in the first place — with a woman who palpably  _ exudes _ childlike fun, it sounds heavenly.

But.

“They all work here,” Kara says rather pointedly after a moment of silence, as if reading Lena’s thoughts. She nods around the bar. “Like, they’re not… nosey. I mean they are, but about me. They’re discreet, is what I mean.”

Lena’s jaw throbs, and she licks her lips. No, Lena, don’t be ridiculous, you’re not doing this. This is setting herself up for humiliating slaughter. So what if they work here? Who are Kara’s  _ friends _ ? Lena doesn’t know shit about being friends with someone, not really. She doesn’t know how to make small talk unless she’s chatting up what Siobhan has been up to lately, her family, anything about anything other than herself. 

No, she can’t do this. She won’t.

xx

So like, she does. Obviously.

Lena has a second drink if only to calm her nerves, because the anticipation of what she’s agreed to sends a crawl over and across her skin, makes it hard to keep her hands steady without the boost. She considers a third, and although Lena’s pretty adept at handling her alcohol, she knows that it would be pushing the limits of what would become a very loose tongue, in probably more ways than one, so she stops at two. She doesn’t have much more time anyway, because soon Kara is rounding the bar with her jacket dangling over her shoulder and an expectant look on her face.

“You ready?”

“Yes, I just need to close out.” Lena waves at her empty drink and digs around in her purse for her wallet, tries to catch the eye of Kara’s coworker left behind the bar.

Lena only hears Kara’s huff behind her, and then a deliciously warm, soft hand is wrapping around hers and tugging her away. “We have been over this, you’ve paid enough to last you through the winter. Let’s go.”

Lena doesn’t have much fight in her while her brain is short-circuiting over the contact at their hands. Their fingers aren’t entwined or anything, Kara’s just got her sizeable hand wrapped around Lena’s palm as she leads her back to the private employee elevators, but Lena’s hearing music all the a same.

Okay maybe this isn’t the worst idea in the world, not if Kara’s got hands that soft on her for the rest of the night.

Not  _ on _ her, on her, just like—

Kara keeps her hold on Lena’s hand all down through the quiet elevator ride, and Lena can’t help but wonder if Kara’s as tongue-tied as she is, if she’s tossing and turning her thoughts over in her head and trying to determine how long they can keep this going without it being weird, without it being dangerous. Lena wonders if Kara is thinking as much about it, or if it’s just second-nature, if her thoughts are entirely on something else and it’s only a forgetful afterthought that they’re still clasped together.

When Kara does let go, right before they step out into the night, Lena almost reaches right back out to take her hand again, but it probably wouldn’t do to be photographed leaving a bar with a woman in the middle of the night holding her  _ hand _ . Least of all with the one person she is desperate to not have figure out who she really is, and nothing would draw Kara’s attention to that like tabloid headlines featuring them both. It’s not like there’s ever been photographers outside Roulette in the last few times she’s been here, because it seems Roulette truly is the best-kept secret of National City, otherwise it wouldn’t really maintain its business, but still. Lena refrains.

Kara insists they take the subway, waving off Lena’s many offers to call them a Lyft, because it’s a straight shot up the orange line and there’s no point in wasting any money.

Lena resists the urge to comment that seventeen dollars couldn’t possibly be more meaningless to her, because, well, she’s trying. She bought the CVS brand of hand soap the other day, for God’s sake, she’s practically one of the people. So if that means taking subways now, then so be it. The only real obstacle is that she doesn’t have a metro card, and rather than making her buy one, Kara just tugs Lena snugly behind her with a loud, infectious laugh as they squeeze their way through the turnstile.

Lena’s blushing like mad, she’ll probably be having dreams for weeks about how Kara’s curved ass fits against her front and the firmness of her shoulders under Lena’s hands. As soon as they break through the barrier, Kara stumbles in front of her onto the platform, keeling over gleefully and looking back at Lena with shining eyes. 

“Sorry,” she laughs. “I can’t double-swipe, I bought the time package. But see? Now it’s even cheaper.”

“Right, we’re just criminals now.” Lena, flustered, smooths down her ruffled hair and straightens her blazer, and it’s only then that she looks down at her expensive office attire and contrasts it to Kara’s black jeans, loose and low on her hips, her gray NCU hoodie.

“Oh, Kara, I’m way over-dressed for this,” she realizes suddenly, eyes wide.

“What? You look great.” 

“So you’re saying everyone will show up to this occasion in a three piece suit?”

Kara contemplates this with pursed lips, her arms crossed. “Okay, fine, but we can work with this,” she insists with a cute wrinkle between her eyebrows. She steps back into Lena’s space, and carries along with her a cloud of that sweet coconut scent that hugs around Lena like a bath.

Kara tugs lightly at the maroon jacket sleeve, not noticing the way Lena regards her with swooning heart eyes. “Take this off, first of all.”

Lena obeys mindlessly, pulls it off, leaving her still in her red vest and black silk button up. Kara hums under her breath as she crouches slightly and pops open the buttons of the vest with deft fingers, brushing it back loosely over Lena’s waist, before moving on to unbutton the top buttons of the shirt underneath.

Lena’s inner thoughts are so X-rated she worries she’s going to scar her own soul for every following lifetime to come.

“Cool,” Kara concludes, stepping back to admire her work. “Just roll up your sleeves, and you’ll be golden.” Kara reaches out once again to rub the fabric of Lena’s shirt between her fingertips. “This is really nice, though, I could totally sleep in this.”

Thoughts of Kara waking up naked, sun streaming through her golden hair splayed over Lena’s sheets, sitting up and tugging on Lena’s shirt to walk off to the kitchen for coffee — it’s overwhelming, but the innocent wonder in Kara’s oblivious eyes is so endearing Lena just unabashedly stares back at Kara.

But when blue eyes — because yes, Lena now realizes, they’re definitely blue and clear and quiet — flicker up to her own, she realizes she’s been asked a question, and she stammers. 

“Oh, um what? Where’d I get it?” Lena pats down at her shirt as if it’s the first time she’s seen it, and she clears her throat, blinking quickly. “It’s from Saks, I think. I can’t remember.”

Kara whistles low, but otherwise makes no comment. When Lena says nothing more, just blinks back at Kara as if waiting for her to do something else that’s going to send her mind absolutely  _ haywire _ , Kara smiles gentle. “Sleeves,” she reminds tapping at Lena’s elbows, and Lena flushes yet again as she scrambles to roll them up.

The train car quickly careens by, sending Kara’s hair fluttering wildly and beautifully with the sudden gust of wind it brings. The segment that comes to a stop before them is empty, thankfully, and Lena trails after Kara inside. She’s not sure if she’s supposed to sit or not — don’t people usually stand on these things, in the movies? Or do they just stand when it’s full and all the seats are taken? Are the seats even clean?

While Lena starts cataloguing everything she’s ever learned and seen about public transportation, and a voice overhead announces, “ _ Stand clear for the closing doors _ ,” Kara, for her part, starts pole-dancing.

Like, literally, this woman is a child, Lena’s certain. She’s spinning around a metal bar in the middle of the car, leaning far out with her feet close to the base, twirling, her hands slipping along its surface, completely carefree. 

“Kara, what are you doing?”

The bartender makes a few more rounds before slowing to a stop, and one side of her mouth lifts into a light-hearted grin. “What’s it look like? Dance with me.”

Lena’s not stupid, she knows this is the part where she insists there’s no music and Kara beckons her along anyway and inevitably teaches her something about letting go of preconcieved societal expectations. Or something like that. Instead, she snorts, crosses her arms. “Kara, that’s hardly dancing.”

“You show me how it’s done, then.”

Lena rolls her eyes. “I will not—”

The train lurches into motion, and Lena stumbles backwards immediately, but Kara is already instinctively reaching out for her and catches her arm, using the pole to keep them grounded. Lena huffs, pushing her frazzled hair from her face, but Kara just laughs, her eyes crinkling as Lena finds her balance on the swaying train car.

Lena lifts her chin to meet her gaze momentarily, once again notices their height difference, the charming way Kara’s chin tilts down so she can catch Lena’s eye, how she’s still leaning into Kara’s hand for support that now snakes around to rest securely on the middle of Lena’s back. It’s much more intimate than necessary, not strictly platonic, but Lena’s too terrified to mention something about it lest Kara take it the wrong way and lets  _ go _ . Because Lena’s skin squirms, suddenly, with how much she craves the bartender's strong hands all over her. 

“I used to dream of being a dancer,” Kara confesses, breaking the quiet.

Lena blinks off her dizzying arousal, clears her throat. “Oh. Really?”

“Mhm, I was obsessed with  _ Dancing With The Stars _ when it first came out. Started high school thinking I was gonna go to Juilliard someday and everything. I loved to sing, too.”

Lena glances over Kara’s face. “What changed?”

Kara shrugs, and Lena resists a shiver when she can feel Kara’s fingers absently shift against her back. “I’m not sure. Just started thinking realistically, I guess.”

Lena’s eyes drop down to stare at Kara’s sculpted jawline, and she tries not to think about how she’s always had enough money to do anything she wanted, how she has three degrees, how she could’ve gone anywhere and been anyone she wanted, and yet she chose the path that she did. A pining, heedless path that left her with even less than where she started.

“What did you want to be when you grew up?” Kara asks softly, ducking her head to catch Lena’s aimless eyes. 

“Oh, um.” She scratches at her nose. “A doctor, mostly. I didn’t dream very big.”

“Nah, I think that’s super cool. You wanted to be a big hotshot and help people, huh?” Kara grins.

“Something like that.” Lena chuckles gingerly, and then bites on her bottom lip. “Although when Youtube started to become a big thing, I  _ did _ dream of becoming a vlogger. Just a little bit, for a second.” Lena holds up her fingertips like forceps, pinches.

Kara laughs ecstatically at that, tossing her head back. “Oh man, but how? You don’t even like social media.”

Lena cocks her head at that. “That’s right,” she says slowly, a chill suddenly creeping up the back of her neck. Had she mentioned her social media before? Surely she hadn’t let something like that slip up, not without a specific reason, she’d remember something like that. Wouldn’t she?

Kara must sense Lena’s guarded, steel walls vaulting so high that Lena might as well be jumping out the emergency exit, because when Lena takes a small step back and away as the train comes to a stop, Kara’s face morphs into a look of complete lucid transparency, of gentle patience as she backtracks.

“When you deleted your Instagram last week,” she explains quietly, like Lena is some panicked, small animal. “You said you don’t like to use it anyway.”

Did she? Lena can’t quite remember her exact wording now, but, well, she supposes she did say something to that effect, after accidentally liking Siobhan’s picture. Which reminds her, actually, that there was a swarm of Twitter mentions and a Buzzfeed article pointing out the exchange the morning after. Lena can’t help the small groan she lets out when she thinks about it.

When Kara leans down again to catch Lena’s eye, Lena finds herself relaxing at the long-suffering compassion on the bartender’s face, and she clears her throat, leaning back into Kara’s hand just as the train starts moving again. “Sorry,” she stammers. “I know I can be…” Lena trails off, not knowing what she means to say in the first place. That she can be a liar? Too secretive? Paranoid?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” is Kara’s cheeky response, and when Lena looks back at her, she’s pushing her glasses up her nose. “I think you’re the normalest person I’ve ever met.”

Lena chuckles dryly. “Oh? And do you say that to all the girls that come through Roulette?”

Kara looks positively aghast at the notion. “What? Of course not. Lena, most of those girls are superstars. You know what they’d do to me if I called them normal? I’d be out of a job for the rest of my life.”

Lena laughs, because Kara’s adorable and carefree and so sweet she wonders what the emotional equivalent of a cavity could be.

“You don’t have to answer this,” Kara starts, and  _ God _ Lena wonders how many conversations she’s left the bartender to feel like she needs to preface with that. “But how’d that whole ex thing go? Did she notice?”

Lena sucks in the inside of her cheek, shrugs one shoulder. “I have no idea. Probably. Haven’t heard from her, though.”

“So… that’s good news, right? Or did you like, want her to notice?”

Lena glances again at Kara, her innocent curiosity, and she shifts from foot to foot. It’s… weird, to talk about her ex, especially after her dream from the other night, with the one person who might make her feel like she doesn’t care what Siobhan thinks anymore.

“No, no, it’s a good thing,” Lena murmurs. 

Kara’s lips scrunch together. “Was it a messy breakup?”

Again, Lena shrugs. “Not really? I mean, it was… quiet.”

“Sometimes those are harder, don’t you think? Like you almost wish it could’ve gone out with a bang, like that’d make it mean something more than it was.” Kara leans into the pole, staring off at something above Lena’s shoulder, but then she laughs shyly, dropping her chin to her chest. “Sorry, that was vague a-and weird, um—”

“Not at all.” Lena keeps her gaze on Kara until the blonde meets it back. “I know exactly what you mean.”

Kara returns Lena’s gentle smile as the train stops again, though this time a group of college-aged boys step on, their lively conversation interrupting them. Lena’s mind sucks back to the boys at Bed Bath & Beyond, to the girl at the coffee shop. Swallowing slightly, Lena turns so that her back stays to the boys, and she sneaks a look to see if Kara’s noticed her discomfort, but the blonde isn’t even looking at her, just watching the kids behind them.

Lena’s probably imagining it, but she thinks Kara’s hand on her back tightens, pulls her just a smidge closer.

The doors close and the train keeps moving.

They do stand slightly closer together now, if only to keep their conversation private, and Kara changes gears entirely.

“So like, if you were to die tomorrow, what would you want to do today?”

“Definitely not go to your Game Night, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Can we put a brat-threshold on tonight? Like you get two freebies, or something? That was one.”

“I’ll wager for three, starting now.”

Kara laughs, her left shoulder slumping against the pole. “I can deal with that. But really, what would you do?”

“You ask weird questions.”

“Stop deflecting.”

With a small smile playing at the edge of her lips, Lena inhales deeply, actually takes the question into consideration. The fuck would she do, really? She’s not dying tomorrow and already she goes day by day mindless and uncertain. If there was a time stamp, a clock ticking down, what’s left that matters? Would she call Siobhan? Her mother? Go visit Lex? Does she have anything left to say to these people in her life? Maybe she’d take Sam somewhere, Ruby too, an all-expense paid trip to Disneyland in Paris, maybe she’d dump all of her money into Spheerical Industries. But these are things she can do in a few minutes, with a few taps on her phone. How would she actually spend her night,  _ tonight _ , when it was already almost over?

Is it horribly naive and pathetic if she maybe  _ would _ just go to this silly Game Night anyway?

“I think that I’d spend it with someone I didn’t get enough time with. Someone that I didn’t get a chance to… experience.”

Lena avoids Kara’s eyes at first, but when she sneaks a glance up at the blonde, the woman is smiling thoughtfully, only nods in response.

“What about you?” Lena asks.

“Oh, I’d probably eat my body weight in potstickers and go hang out with a bunch of dogs.”

Lena’s eyes narrow. “Why do I get the feeling you already do both of those things on a regular basis?”

“Hey.” Kara wags a finger in Lena’s face. “I do not get to the shelter nearly enough.”

Lena suppresses a whine. Of  _ course _ this perfectly sculpted, sweet, generous, friendly woman goes to an animal shelter on a regular basis. Lena’s only a fool if she ever doubts that Kara is just the embodiment of everything that’s good in the world.

Instead she laughs, shakes her head at the absurdity of her life right now. Remembering something Kara said before, she bites her lower lip. “You like to sing?”

Kara’s face lights up, and she nods eagerly, swinging closer to Lena in her excitement. “Yeah, I love it. I told you I worked at a jazz club for a bit, right?” She barely waits for Lena’s nod before continuing. “I mostly just bartended, but some nights the owner let me sing along with the band. Usually it was when it wasn’t too busy, or our regular performer was out, but it was so amazing Lena. That’s probably the one thing I miss that I don’t get at Roulette.”

The corners of Lena’s mouth pull back into a soft smile. “You should sing for me sometime.”

Kara’s eyebrows raise excitedly. “Yeah?”

Lena’s nods faintly.

“How about let’s see how tonight goes and then I’ll talk you into our annual karaoke night.”

Lena’s smile drops. “Your annual what?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so supercorp endgame, yeah?
> 
> also this is really just an interim chapter. with the game night it was all supposed to be one chapter but it got extremely long so, two parts! fun. cool. thank u for meeting me here. see u next week xx


	5. what it's like when everything's right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> spoiler lenas bad at pictionary too

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i haven't played like half these games
> 
> tw: brief mention of alcoholism towards the end

Kara wasn’t kidding about the train being a straight shot, because when they step off (and Kara’s hand falls away from the small of Lena’s back), it’s only half a block west before they’re at the stoop to Kara’s building. It’s only a fourth-floor walk up, and Kara’s keys dangle from her fingertips all the way up as she talks over her shoulder, prepping Lena for what they’re about to walk into.

“So you’ve already met Lucy, she bartends late nights and weekends with me, and she’ll seem like she doesn’t pay attention but she will _ crush _ you in Catan if you take your eyes away for even a second. She usually she teams up with Winn, he does the early shift on weeknights. They literally have nothing in common, but I guess they think super alike because they make a scary good team.” Kara stops in the middle of the stairwell briefly, holds up a finger. “Oh, but if you put any sort of snack or drink out, then it’s over for them. They won’t be able to pay attention to save their lives.”

Lena pulls at the open collar of her shirt as Kara continues rambling. “And then there’s Kelly and James, they’re brother and sister. She works weeknights with Winn, and James supervises when Veronica’s not around or doing paperwork. Anyway, those two are relentless when they team up on charades, know each other in and out, it’s unfair. But we can totally capitalize on the sibling rivalry, because they’re very competitive; You pin ‘em against each other on anything and we win immediately.”

Kara stops outside a yellow-painted metal door and lowers her voice, leans in close to Lena. “Brainy is — well, he’s Brainy for a reason, he’s brilliant and that makes him dangerous, but he’s super in love with Nia so keep in mind that she’s his weak point. I don’t think they’re technically together yet, but honestly I can’t keep up with them anymore. They’re my barbacks just on weekends, during the week they go to NCU.”

Kara sucks in a gulp of breath, smiles wide, keys hovering before the lock. “Any last questions?”

Lena had a 3.98 GPA in one of the most grueling grad programs in the country, yet somehow she feels more lost standing outside Kara’s apartment than she ever did before an exam. “Is it too late to back out?”

Kara rolls her eyes and loops her arm through Lena’s elbow. “I’m counting that as your first pass for being a brat.” She then pushes the door open and calls out a greeting into the open apartment space, and a chorus of excited shouts echo back.

“It’s about fucking time,” Lucy grumbles as she walks passed them from the kitchen, taking a swig from a bottle of wine. She does a double-take when she notices Lena, however, and her eyes flicker straight back to Kara’s with her eyebrows raised in question, but Kara seems oblivious.

The blonde takes Lena’s blazer and purse and hangs them up with her own coat on the back of the door, and clears her throat. “Everyone, this is Lena, Lena this is everyone, and we’re going to destroy all of you tonight.” Kara nods curtly. “Thank you for coming to my TED talk.” 

Oh, God, Lena’s pining after a fucking nerd.

Lucy gives flashes Lena a brief, tight-lipped smile. “Yeah, great to see you again. Kara? C’mere a sec?”

Kara gets tugged away into the small kitchenette to their right, no doubt for Lucy to ask what the hell Lena is doing there. Lena takes a steadying breath, but she can’t help the way her skin prickles as she stands aimlessly in the foyer. It’s fine, it’s been like all of four seconds and she hasn’t ruined anyone’s life so, she’s on the right track.

She doesn’t stand there lost and helpless for long, because a tall, clean-shaven man in a tight t-shirt wanders up to her and sticks his hand out. “Hey, I’m James.”

Lena forces a smile as she takes his hand, this pitiful, elastic thing across her face. “Lena, hi.”

Sinking his hands back into the front pockets of his jeans, he jerks his head back towards the kitchen. “Let me guess, she ambushed you with this at the bar?”

“Technically I didn’t put up much of a fight. Why, do I look that out of my element?”

He shrugs, scratches at his chin with a smile. “No, not at all, but I know how Kara can get.”

Lena glances over into the kitchen where Kara wears a wide-eyed, earnest expression, rocking on the balls of her feet as she babbles energetically about something to Lucy.

“So she’s always this… peppy?”

“When she’s in a good mood, yeah, just about.”

Lena lifts an eyebrow, a smile curling her mouth. “So she is capable of good moods then? She knows how to cry?”

James laughs, this deep, whole-body rumble. “Put on any Disney movie and you’ll see just how strong those tear ducts are.”

Lena huffs out a laugh, and her shoulders drop minutely from their tense coil.

“I’m about to grab a drink, you want anything?” James points a thumb over his shoulder.

Those two cocktails from Roulette feel like hours ago, and Lena nods gratefully. “Sure, thank you.”

He nods and waves a hand towards the living room where everyone else sits together on the couch and carpeted floor. “Cool, make yourself at home, Kara’s place is basically communal at this point.” 

Lena smiles appreciatively and makes over to join them after a deep breath. The whole room is encompassed in a warm glow from baby yellow lamps and a scattered candles, thrumming with a sweet aroma of vanilla and sandalwood. Low, easy-going conversation makes up the small group lounged around the white coffee table in the living room, and it’s enough to knock Lena’s rigidness down further. Lena toes around the couches and takes an empty, cushioned chair by the window. So far, this isn’t so bad. She’d be happy to spend the whole night talking about Kara’s sunshine personality, about anything but herself really, to keep her hands busy with casual drinking and light-hearted banter. 

A woman with a glass of wine in her hand and a dark turtle-neck offers a smile from the short, pale blue couch. “So Lena, you’re either incredibly brave or just another victim to the Danvers puppy dog eyes.” She laughs at Lena’s guilty expression that suggests the latter. “I’m Kelly.”

_ Danvers _, Lena turns over in her head. It’s cute, it suits her, she thinks.

“Nice to meet you,” Lena greets back, smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles in her trousers and hoping she’s subtle in how she wipes off the claminess of her palms. The remaining three — Winn, Nia, and Brainy — introduce themselves, and Lena does her best to stifle the professional formalities, to keep cool and resist the urge to shake everyones’ hands. 

She should be better at this, more confident anyway. She was the plus-one to hundreds of parties with Siobhan, was perfectly tailored arm candy as she trailed around the room after her actress girlfriend, introduced to dozens of faces who she’d treat like royalty only to forget their name half a second later. Lena was good in those situations, she was good at making Siobhan look good. Lena had a polished entourage of witty remarks tokened by subtle evasiveness, she perfected the technique of being charming enough to make anyone feel like the second most important person in the room, but not so endearing that she’d take the spotlight off her marvelous date.

Honestly Lena easily could have been in the lineup for just as many acting awards herself.

But of course this is different, she’s not playing a role, not filling in a cookie-cutter space. Lena finds herself wanting to listen to what Kara’s friends talk about with one another, wants to engage with them and impress Kara with how _ cool _ and _ casual _she can be, just for the sake of being liked. Even though it’s probably inevitable that all of this will lead to regret, both on Kara’s part for inviting Lena in the first place and on Lena’s behalf because she knows better than to think she’s good for anything but being a trophy wife, Lena still viscerally craves something so simple as being approved of. 

James comes back around thankfully before Lena can spiral further, and she takes the drink he holds out eagerly. She really needs to relax, because sitting in the corner, mute and frozen, is in the opposite direction of the impression she hopes to make.

She can do this. She’s Lena fucking Luthor, she knows how to socialize. People literally used to pay obscene amounts of money just to hang out in the same room as her and Siobhan. But considering she’s not here as anyone’s date or to represent her family, acting as stand-in for support at Lex’s side because Lillian was busy, or with the single mindset to make Siobhan look good at a cocktail party, well… it means she doesn’t have to overanalyze everything she does, right? Sam would tell her that she just has to be herself.

Taking the first sip at what tastes to be a simple rum and coke, Lena forces herself not to think about how the reason she’s in National City is to figure out who exactly she is in the first place. Because if she thinks about that, then she’s not left with a whole lot of ideas on how to proceed now.

Maybe this is exactly how she finds out.

Lena shakes her head, tunes her anxieties out. Winn and Brainy are heatedly debating something about the risks of companies cloud computing without a properly secured network, especially ones in the business of information. Rather than psychoanalyzing her whirlwind of thoughts, Lena pushes herself to listen in on their discussion.

“Fuck’s sake,” Lucy interrupts, returning from the kitchen and dropping onto the couch beside Kelly. “Can’t you guys talk about something actually interesting? Lena’s gonna think we’re all a bunch of losers that just spend our time playing board games.”

On the floor next to Winn at Kelly’s feet, Nia wrinkles her nose. “But that’s exactly what we do.”

Kara also bounces over and settles onto the armrest of Lena’s seat. She braces her hand along the backside, distracts Lena with her sweet smell when she sways close. “Lena likes the sciencey stuff, don’t worry. She’d probably out-nerd all of you anyway.”

Lena scoffs. “How am I the nerd? You literally recited over a dozen standard bar jokes the first night we met. In a bar.” 

“Okay, but like, it worked, didn’t it? You’re here now.” Kara’s tone is suddenly challenging and sultry that Lena nearly misses how Nia snorts her drink.

Winn ignores them entirely and twists round to face Lena, the neck of a beer bottle dangling from his fingertips. “Okay okay, then you settle can this for us. Is it or is it not reckless to to store the mainframe of a complex, expensive database in a network that has virtually the same level of protection as any regular household wifi? I mean, it’s madness, right? Tell me I’m right.”

Brainy clears his throat. “I did not say they shouldn’t protect their mainframe, just that it’s not very economical to spend so much on security when you could be expanding the outreach of service delivery. It’s not productive, it makes no sense. Who’s going to hack a reference database like Wikipedia?”

Lucy lifts a hand lazily mid-sip of her wine. “I’ve ruined plenty of Wikipedia pages, actually.”

Everyone laughs, but Winn and Brainy are looking to Lena, awaiting a solution that will tell one of them wrong.

Lena falters, glancing between the two men. She quickly looks to Kara, but the bartender just regards her with laidback ease, and she swears she sees the subtle inclination of an encouraging nod.

Breathe.

“Well.” She wraps both hands around her glass. “I’m not a computer scientist by any means, but I think, like most things, there’s a balance. On the one hand, you need to be constantly expanding your dossier to cover an array of data so that you can keep up in this technological age, and you can’t be too generous with your security or you risk falling behind, because technology advancement slows for no one.”

“You see?” Brainy says to Winn smugly.

“On the other hand,” and here Lena waves her hand skeptically as she sips at her drink. “Knowledge, data, information — it’s all the new currency. Online encyclopedias, search engines, they already exist and have access to all public domain information there is. What’s coming of age are new methods of sharing that knowledge, like TED talks, crash-courses, podcasts, new social media apps. Pharmaceutical companies are finding new ways to make money when they’re at a stand-still for new miracle cures; they’re changing _ how _ they release product, rather than updating what’s on the shelf. It’s all the new deliveries of info that people are interested in, and companies are scrambling fast to be the first with the next big one to go viral, and it can take too long and be too expensive to patent anything nowadays. So if you’ve got something, and it’s a good one, you’ve gotta lock it down, otherwise it’s not a matter of if, but _ when _ someone steals your idea. Maxl Lord is more paranoid than anyone I’ve ever met, but he runs the largest pharmacology research facility in the country. So, you know. Balance.”

Quiet envelops the room as Lena finishes off her ramble, leaving only in its wake the pounding of her heart in her ears, and Lena mentally plays back and forth on a loop everything she’s just said, analyzes, critiques, corrects — she could’ve been more specific about patenting processes, more vague there, didn’t need to get off on such a tangent, it was all such a simple question to begin with, she doesn’t really even know what she’s talking about anyway — 

“Wow. She left both of them speechless.” Nia, blinking, looks up to Kara starstruck, and points at Lena like she’s not there. “Where did you find her, and can I have one too?”

While everyone laughs, Kara just beams down on Lena and tucks a strand of hair behind the brunette’s ear. The anxiety bleeds from Lena’s tendons like mist as everyone breaks back into a room full of chatter, but Lena’s eyes are glued to Kara’s. It doesn’t last long, because the blonde hops up to her feet once more, and Lena raises her eyebrows in question. 

Kara nods her head towards an adjoining room. “Help me grab the games?”

Kara’s friends are the epitome of polite and easy, but Lena would be lying if she said she’d rather Kara didn’t leave her again, so she nods eagerly and climbs out of the seat. She can handle her own, she’s got this under control for the most part — high-functioning social anxiety at its finest — but something about Kara’s eyes locking onto hers, crisp and unwavering like broad daylight, no matter who’s in the peripheral… everything else just feels a little less overwhelming.

As she follows Kara around the corner, she thinks she hears Winn ask, “Do you think she really knows Maxwell Lord?”

“Shut up, Schott.”

It’s not until she’s actually in it that she realizes, oh. Kara’s room. She’s in Kara’s bedroom, right now.

Normally she actually kisses a girl before she ends up in here.

If Kara notices the way Lena’s mouth pinches and her cheeks flush, she doesn’t let on, but once they’re alone and out of sight of Kara’s friends, she turns back to Lena with a cutely furrowed brow. 

“Are you doing okay? This isn’t too much, is it?”

Lena lets out a small laugh. “A little late to be asking that, don’t you think?”

At Lena’s sarcastic tone reemerging, Kara doesn’t look the least bit guilty, and she’s smiling again. “That’s freebie number two, by the way. And maybe I just want the satisfaction of hearing you say you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Mm, still too early on that one. Get me drunk, then we’ll talk.”

“What kind of drunk are you?” Kara’s grin scrunches the corners of her eyes. “Just for future reference. Like are you gonna be the same amount of mean and bratty as always? Or super cuddly? Because I’d really prefer the latter, if I’m getting a say in this.”

Lena smacks at Kara’s shoulder, grimacing through a smile as a blush crawls up her neck. “Keep up with the attitude, and you’ll never find out.”

Kara’s cheeks look ready to burst if her lips widen any further, but the blonde only shakes her head and turns away from Lena towards a faded brown armoire, drops to her knees and rummages through. The blonde is practically crawling inside to make through the crowded cabinet, getting at the buried board games. Lena absolutely doesn’t take a moment to check out Kara’s ass in her black skinny jeans. Totally not.

Inappropriate leering aside, there’s a rush of elation blooming in her chest again, like toasted honeycomb dripping down the back of her throat, like whiskey that doesn’t burn on the way down and just keeps her warm and satisfied. 

Lena thinks maybe she’d like sticking around here.

With Kara preoccupied, Lena takes the chance to glance over the room. It’s cute, and so very Kara it’s endearing. The peach walls, the giant iron-paned window offering a welcoming scatter of the neighborhood lit by the moonlight, it’s cozy. Cluttered, sure, there are sweaters and other articles of clothing strewn about, unfinished books open face down on shelves, the desk, the floor. The bed’s made, if a bit sloppily, with a green-striped comforter tossed haphazardly across. But in taking in the bed and the mountain of disheveled pillows, Lena notices the very still, very orange, fuzzy _ mound _.

Lena remembers, vaguely, something a woman at the bar had said. “Kara?”

She gets a distracted grunt in response.

“Is that… a cat?”

“Huh?” Kara, with her hair mussed and glasses askew, pushes jackets out of her way and pokes her head out of the armoire. “Oh yeah, that’s Pork Belly. You can pet him, he’s nice.”

Lena, pressing her lips together, raises an eyebrow. “Pork Belly?”

“I know what you’re going to say, but I didn’t actually name him. Go on, he’s super soft.”

“Sure you didn’t. I think I’m alright, though.” Lena trusts Kara, sure, but she’s still skeptical the creature won’t claw her face off.

“Hold on, I’ll show you.” Kara clambers out of the closet to come beside Lena, cups her hair behind her ears. Already cooing, she leans over to scoop the fluffy animal up into her arms. Aside from a low squeak, the cat is practically limp in Kara’s arms and lets her manhandle him to cradle like a baby.

“See? Look at him, he’s a prince.” Kara scrunches up her nose adorably as she rubs it against the cat’s small, whiskered face. His purrs start to become more audible, and okay, fine, Lena smiles.

“Thought cats were supposed to be… you know, mean.” Lena gingerly strokes a finger along the striped arm dangling out of Kara’s grip. Other than a small twitch and a flick of his tail, he’s indifferent to Lena’s touch. 

Kara’s voice is all baby-talk and distracted. “No of course not, you just have to raise them right. Isn’t that right, PB? Isn’t that_ right? _”

Shifting her focus from the cat to Kara’s comically wide eyes and jovial smile, Lena swoons.

Once she’s gotten her fill of attention, Kara sighs wistfully and holds the cat out to her by his sides. His feet and tail hang cartoonishly low, his face scrunched up and pouty, and yes he’s adorable but Lena quickly shakes her head and backs away.

“Uh, no, definitely better if not. Sorry.”

Kara shrugs like it couldn’t make a difference in the world to her, and after setting the animal back down on the bed, she takes back to the armoire to finish digging.

The cat sashays around in a circle slowly at first, before he makes way over to the corner where Lena stands. She watches him curiously as he moseys up to her and nudges his head against the back of her hand, only as forceful as an attention-seeking cat can be. 

Fine, she pets him. Just a little bit.

Go figure the human embodiment of sunshine would also have a cat so tame and sweet.

A monstrosity of board games later, Kara finally huffs with satisfaction and turns back around, scooping up half while Lena takes the rest.

But then there’s this last, private smile they share before exiting the room, and it lasts only for a moment, but it leaves Lena breathless. It’s soft, it’s PG-13 and adolescent, it’s like morning frost when the sun first emerges from behind the clouds, it’s the kind of sweet that used to make Lena think she liked love songs on the radio and kept her sitting through rom-coms and sneaking Nicholas Sparks novels under her blanket after Lillian thought she’d long since gone to bed. 

“Do you keep those games under five fucking levels of security or something?” Lucy groans loudly once they return to the room, and Kara rolls her eyes.

“You know there’s a reason I keep them hidden.”

“Oh yeah?” Lucy perks up at Kara’s challenging tone. “And what’s that, little Danvers?”

Everyone gives Lucy a baffled look, but James is the one to answer the question. “Your Monopoly set only has five hundred bills, and it’s missing over half the properties.”

Lucy waves her hand. “Yeah, and?”

“Pretty much all of your Cards Against Humanity cards are soaked in wine stains,” Kelly adds.

“Okay but you can still read them.”

Winn holds a finger up. “There was that one time you put cut-outs of all our faces on the What Do You Meme cards. That was pretty genius.”

“Hell yeah, it was,” Lucy agrees emphatically, reaching out to high-five Winn. 

Most of the games they play that night do end up requiring teams, if only because most of the actual individual-player boards take too long and they’re already getting a late start as it is. This night is as much a test on her social capabilities as it is on her attentional awareness and how quickly she can learn to play something she’s never heard of before. Everyone’s rather patient with her, even offer a few times to try practice rounds, but she waves off their concerns calmly, insists she’ll catch up. 

They take the gathering to the bar stools around the kitchen island, and the first game she teams up with Kara on is Codenames. 

“So this one depends on you keeping in mind how I think,” Kara explains in Lena’s ear as James and Kelly first go up against Winn and Lucy. “So that you can give clues you know I’m gonna pick up on, and that’s how I figure out what cards on the table belong to our team. Does that make sense?” 

Lena doesn’t even know what Kara’s saying to her, not when her mouth is so close to Lena’s face and she leans so close to where Lena sits. Watching Kara’s lips move with the words proves only more distracting.

“Yep. Got it.”

She figures out the gist from watching the others. It’s an intimidating place to start, considering every other pair seems to have a home-field advantage on having known each other for God knows how long. It doesn’t help matters when Kara, after moving to sit across from Lena and next to Brainy, smacks her hands on the table and threatens everyone. “We are going to destroy you guys so bad you’ll never want to show your face at Game Night again. Right Lena?”

Total. Fucking. Dork. 

Beside Lena, Nia whispers in Lena’s ear. “She gets a little competitive, if you haven’t already noticed.”

Lena gives Kara a nervous thumbs up across the kitchen island.

“Right, so just to recap,” Nia explains quickly as the cards get rearranged in front of them. “The object of the game is to give Kara hints as to which cards belong to you guys, but you can only give one-word clues. And you have to try and make sure that Kara won’t mistake one of mine and Brainy’s cards with one of yours. Good?”

Lena nods.

“You need anything else cleared up?” 

“Another drink is what I need,” Lena mutters, and everyone laughs. Except Kara immediately stretches across the game to snatch Lena’s empty glass and bustles to fix another rum and coke for her, and the group laughs again at Kara’s eagerness to get the game moving.

They’re not half bad, and Lena’s surprised to see how much Kara’s actually picked up on from the few interactions they’ve had so far, how much she remembers, how they already have their own insider tells that no one else would get. She certainly doesn’t expect to win, and only halfway through at that. Things are pretty tired and both sides still have four cards left, when Kara gives the clue _ diner, _ and indicates the last four of their remaining cards. Lena, thinking back to their first date (not actual date, just like, you know, dinner, breakfast, whatever), automatically picks out _ carnival _ and _ sweater _ , she doesn’t even need to think twice. It takes her a few more seconds of contemplation, but she goes out on a limb and settles ultimately on the last two being _ Greece _ and _ milk _. When Kara elatedly slaps the winning marks on their cards and cheers, Nia and Brainy loudly object.

“What do those even have to _ do _ with diners?” Nia groans, running her hands over her face.

“Nothing.” Brainy wears a deep, serious frown. “There is absolutely no correlation whatsoever.”

So they take the win on the first game.

Kara pulls out all of the strategies that she suggested to Lena. Though despite all the pep-talk she’d given, Kara seems to have got the sabotage aspect of the night covered all on her own. The first thing Lena notices is rather harmless — Kara just sets out a bowl of hot chili Doritos in front of Lucy when it’s her turn in Scrabble, flashes a wink Lena’s way, and no one really understands why Lena giggles in the middle of her turn. Lucy’s steady climb in points plateaus out after that. Just before they start a game of Egyptian War, Kara offers Winn a slice of her precious, hoarded carrot cake, and Lena’s not sure how the game works exactly, but apparently Winn doesn’t even try the entire game, and Kara takes home another win. At some point, Lena overhears Kara telling James something along the lines of, “I dunno, I thought I heard Kelly say Winn’s the real pro here, and if Lucy hadn’t already called dibs, she’d totally pick him over you.” When charades comes around, James is too defensive and exasperated to get any point across, and Kelly just flounders with nothing concrete to work off of.

Okay, yeah, maybe she accepts Kara’s subtle fist-bump when no one’s looking. Her tactics are a little impressive, if not slightly terrifying.

The last task, though, Lena never sees Kara make much use of, and she actually starts to keep an eye out for when the blonde is going to put it into action. But it never comes. She thinks the mischievous smile and pursed lips she gets from Kara a few times is perhaps encouragement, so, alright, during a round of Spoons, maybe she leans closer to Brainy, nonchalant as they keep swiping through cards.

“Hey—”

He doesn’t so much as look up at her. “Looking at my cards is cheating.”

“I’m not looking at your cards.” Lena rolls her eyes, briefly makes eye contact with Kara across the circle. With a grin, and holding that gaze, Lena says to Brainy, “I just wanted to say, you and Nia make a cute couple.”

Brainy stops picking up new cards, letting his pile grow as his nose scrunches. “Nia and I are not a couple.”

“Oh?” The way Kara is shaking with how hard she’s trying to stifle herself across the circle makes Lena herself struggle to keep cool. “So… she’s single then?”

Brainy ends up losing that round, and Kara later makes a PSA declaring Lena as her favorite game night partner. 

They have their downs though, because when Pictionary comes around, Lena proves to be just as awful at Kara is at drawing. When Kara draws what Lena guesses to be a microwave, or maybe a case of beer, the timer goes off and supposedly it was a prison cell. Lena doesn’t see it. In turn, Lena draws the Statue of Liberty to the best of her abilities, like it’s really just a woman with a crown holding a torch, but Kara is unyielding in her insistence that it’s Spider-Man. They fail miserably at every other prompt, only getting points on the pitifully simple ones, but the fact that they’re both as equally, artistically incoherent sends bouts of raucous laughter through Kara’s friends. For the first time, Lena learns how failing at something doesn’t have to be the end of the world, doesn’t have to be a horrible, dreaded, shameful thing, that sometimes it can be for the best.

Because when Kara collapses onto the couch beside Lena after the last round, exhausted from laughter, the brilliant grin she shares with Lena is earth-shattering. It makes the axis on which the world spins tremble. It doesn’t quite shake, doesn’t set things off kilter, Lena doesn’t feel horrifyingly out of her depth like before, the world isn’t flipped upside-down. But rather everything is just twitched a few degrees, just the slightest change that lets in a little more light into Lena’s perspective, makes everything not seem quite so dark and gloomy.

When Lena came to National City just two weeks ago, with her tongue in her throat and convinced all she’d ever be is lonely, or hell, even just a few days ago when she wasn’t sure if she’d ever let herself talk to Kara again — Lena would’ve _ laughed _ if she’d been told that she’d end up here. Here, on a practical stranger’s couch, surrounded by people who are emphatically kind and miraculously without any ulterior agenda to being friendly with her. There’s no kissing-up to keep her famous girlfriend tame or overly-feigned interest because of how heavy her credit card is, how menacing her family can be. She’s just here, next to someone like Kara, who smiles like there’s nothing in the world she couldn’t take on.

She would’ve laughed because she didn’t think someone like her had a chance at something like this.

The energy starts to dwindle down around four in the morning, people losing steam. Lena’s honestly impressed they made it this far in the first place, but Lucy assures her with a wry smile that given their schedules, how they make their paychecks, staying up until four is like any other week night, and it’s actually “pretty fucking embarasssing that these pussies are already getting tired.”

Lucy’s words, not Lena’s.

It’s not like she’s reluctant to admit it, but it’s taken until now for Lena to decide that she really _ likes _ Kara’s friends. Lena was fairly reserved about forming any sort of judgements at first, honestly had just been too preoccupied with fretting over herself to even think about it, from the way she sat in a chair to trying to keep up with all the gameplay. And there’s also the fact that Lena just hasn’t made much of a living out of having her own opinions, being concise with them. She always kind of went along with things before her. Having an opinion on who Siobhan partied with or where Lex shared his research, it hadn’t made a difference in the end. It was rather easier to not care, to wave things off, turn a blind eye, not put too much weight on things she can’t change. Having an opinion, _ caring _, it just led to the inevitable sort of fight blown out of proportion, with Siobhan screaming her throat raw that Lena only cared about the stupid things that didn’t matter, that she wasn’t supporting her girlfriend’s dreams and apparently only trying to sabotage her future at every turn, while Lena in turn would rub her eyes raw and frustrated and slam doors throughout various hotel rooms across the country, trailers on set, apartment foyers. Always, always, she’d leave, a Luthor must always leave first, but she always came back too. Which is probably why Lena was left alone in the end.

Lena reckons an opinion is easier to have when it’s a positive one, anyway.

Still, she’s long since come around to deciding that coming tonight wasn’t the worst idea in the world.

“Oh, you don’t have to do those,” Nia tells her offhandedly, sneaking up beside Lena as she washes the empty drinking glasses at the kitchen sink, while the younger woman deposits some trash from their snacks into the waste bin underneath. Lena had snuck away to scrub a few dishes as the gang winds down, but Kara’s still going hard in the living room with a Jenga tower on its last dregs of life with Kelly and Lucy, the girls yelling, the boys narrating its collapse.

Lena shrugs. “It’s the least I can do, for letting me crash your guys’ plans, and all.”

Nia laughs and leans back against the kitchen counter. “Yeah, Kara is pretty selective about her sacred game night. But don’t feel like you’re crashing anything. I know she definitely appreciates the distraction, with Alex not being here and stuff.” 

She says this with a vague wave of her hand and a solemn smile, like Lena should know who she’s talking about, because Kara had mentioned earlier that they were short someone and she even opens her mouth to ask who they might be, but she thinks better of it. 

“Right, of course,” she answers coolly. 

Being someone who could start a brand out of keeping secrets, she’s feeling rather keen about respecting Kara’s privacy, not wanting to take advantage of Kara’s friend to greedily learn as much about the blonde as she can.

Because that’s all she wants. She just wants to know _ more _.

And she gets the irony, she isn’t blind. She can palpably taste her curiosity for learning as much about Kara as there is to know, while at the same time withholding as much as she can manage. It’s a precarious dichotomy, one that won’t last forever.

When just about everyone’s dragging their feet, jargons slowing down, Lucy finally stands and is the one to call it, and then everyone is making a break for it. Kara catches Lena’s gaze from across the room, and while everyone gathers their things, the bartender comes up beside Lena. 

“Stick around for a minute?”

She can’t lie and say that she wasn’t already planning on stalling in order to steal a few moments alone with Kara before the night ends anyway, so like, this works too. Lena nods, smiles at the grin on Kara’s face. 

So she lingers, as everyone starts making their goodbyes. They’re all quite the huggy group with one another, and in retrospect she supposes it would stand out quite a lot if everyone were to simply shake her hand, or whatever it is that friends do with each other, but she’s still surprised when Lucy tugs her in for sideways, firm hug that feels more like an obligatory sports check than an embrace, but still. It’s a hug, and then James is hugging her goodbye, and Nia, and so on. If anyone thinks anything of how Lena is the only one to stay behind with Kara, none of them mention it, and Lena tries not to read too much into that.

“So, can I hear it now?” Kara asks once she shuts the door behind her finally.

Lena lifts an eyebrow. “Hear what?”

“That you had an awesome time, that my friends are awesome, that you think I’m awesome.”

Lena wishes she could say anything to the contrary, really, because the smug look on Kara’s face is infuriatingly cute, the crinkle at the corners of her eyes enamoring. 

Lena runs her tongue along her top row of teeth contemplatively, turns back to the kitchen. “I think I’ll plead the fifth on that one.”

“Oh come on.” She can hear Kara rushing after her. “That was awesome, c’mon say it with me.”

Glancing back at Kara over her shoulder once with a shake of her head, Lena concedes. “Okay, yes, I had a wonderful time, and your friends are lovely.” 

“And? You’re forgetting one.” 

Lena rolls her eyes with a smile as she sits back onto a barstool. She hesitates, looks back at Kara with pursed lips and bashful eyes. “You’re pretty great,” she relents, but it comes out much softer than she intends.

A goofy smile pulls Kara’s lips apart. With her hands stuffed into the belly pocket of her hoodie, hair tied back in a sloppy ponytail and her crooked glasses, and then the fond expression lining her eyes, it’s so fucking _ adoring _ that it’s nearly enough to make Lena whine with affection. Because she never knew someone could make her feel so warm like this without laying a hand on her, without sexual undertones or even a single spoken word. Of course, it also makes her want to keen forward and kiss the hell out of her, but that’s secondary. Mostly.

This is all terrifying, absolutely, but it’s easier for Lena to not be so scared when she’s got Kara looking at her like that.

Lena shakes her head — because, Christ, she can really get ahead of herself sometimes. She decides to switch gears. “Can I ask you something?” 

“Sure, anything.”

Lena licks her lips. “Feel free to… well, not answer at all,” she starts, and — wow, they really are making a habit out of this, aren’t they? “I just, I was wondering… who’s Alex?”

Something of a shadow passes over Kara’s face. The lines of her mouth, at her eyes, they all flatten, her jaw tenses. It only lasts a fraction of a second, hardly, before Kara ducks her head, and when she looks back at Lena again she’s more composed, though still somber. Kara doesn’t say anything, not right away, stays quiet as slides back onto the seat beside Lena, looking ahead at the opposite wall. Lena is almost wondering if Kara might actually take her up on her offer and not even answer the question, but then she speaks.

“She’s my sister.”

Lena bites her lip. “Your sister… the one who’s not dead, and doesn’t drink?” she asks slowly.

Kara chuckles, nods. “Yeah, that one.”

“Did you two have a falling out or something?” Lena would definitely be the expert in this department, if that’s the case.

“No, nothing like that.” Kara shakes her head, dips her chin down and picks at the seam of her sweater. “We’re great, actually. She’s my best friend, my whole world. I’d do anything for her.”

“Okay.” When Kara looks up at Lena with a squirming question in her eyes, Lena nods for her to continue, to take her time.

“We live together, actually. Normally. She’s away right now.” Kara’s voice is suddenly rather choked up, and she laughs sardonically as she blinks away damp eyes. “Sorry, it’s really not that big of a deal, I’m being much more dramatic about this than I need to be.”

“Don’t apologize. You’re not being dramatic.”

“I am, a little bit.” Kara laughs dryly. “She’s fine. Or like, she will be. I just miss her, is all.”

Lena chews on the inside of her cheek. “Where is she now?”

There’s another stretch of silence, and again Lena contemplates dropping the topic altogether, as it’s clearly uncomfortable for the other woman, and she almost regrets asking in the first place.

“She’s in rehab.”Kara inhales shakily, stares ahead forcefully. “It’s only a forty-five day program, it’s really not that big of a deal, I guess. It’s just a lot, you know? She only just left a few days ago and it’s weird not having her around.” She turns to look at Lena again, smiles half-heartedly. “She’ll be back before no time, but it took a lot to get to where we are right now. A lot had to happen before she… before _ we _came to this decision. And it’s for the best, really, that she’s there. I’m glad she’s getting help, that she wants to at all. This isn’t the easy part or anything, but the hard part’s over at least.”

Kara’s gaze drops to somewhere below Lena’s face, her shoulder maybe, but it’s drifted, thick like she’s somewhere else entirely. 

Lena might be really overstaying her welcome at this point, could be completely out of bounds, but she takes the small risk. She leans closer, slides her hand on top of Kara’s fidgeting fingers. 

Kara’s eyes snap back up to hers at the gesture, and they wobble with vulnerability. Lena’s not overwhelmed by the emotion in them, by how just a few hours ago she couldn’t imagine anything but a smile to ever take over a face like that. But it does make her chest clench, gives her a visceral longing to alleviate a strain like that all the more.

“Thank you for telling me.” Lena squeezes Kara’s hand, and after a beat, warm fingers twist to wrap around Lena’s and squeeze back back.

Something like shy, Kara presses her lips together in a sheepish smile. “Thanks for coming tonight,” she says in turn, her soft voice croaked at the edges. “Sorry if I was too pushy.”

Lena accepts the change in subject graciously, and rolls her eyes. “Kara, I know we only just met, but I don’t think you could strong-arm anyone into anything even if you tried. You’re rather doughy, you know.”

Kara mockingly gasps in offense. “_ Doughy? _ Like, a donut?”

“Please, you’d be so happy with yourself if you were a donut.”

The bartender sighs wistfully. “Mm, yeah, I totally would.”

Lena notices a tiny smirk form on Kara’s face, and already Lena’s telling her, “Don’t say it—”

“I’d totally eat myself.”

Lena sighs.

“I should probably get going,” she admits eventually. A glance at her watch tells her that… yes, it is actually 4:34 a.m. Calling up a Lyft on her phone, Lena huffs. “You are really doing nothing good for my sleep schedule, I’ll have you know.”

Kara’s face falls, and she really does nail the puppy dog look, but it’s so foolish Lena doesn’t let it win.

“Okay but who needs sleep when you’re having fun?” Kara shrugs.

“Everyone, Kara. You always need sleep, that’s not something that changes.”

Kara makes a _ hmph _. “Yeah but it’s flexible.”

Lena walks over to the front door and starts to slip on her blazer her open, wrinkled vest, shaking her head fondly. “You’re a terrible influence.”

With her hands stuffed into the front pockets of her black skinny jeans, Kara ambles up to Lena. “Maybe, but at least I’m funny, right?” 

“I’m going to let you think about that one for yourself.”

“Okay,” Kara sighs, reaching ahead of Lena to pull the door open for her. “If I’m terrible for your sleep then you’re bad for my ego. You wound me, Lena.”

“You’ll survive.”

She turns back one last time, now in the doorway, to regard Kara. Slumped against the edge of the door, her hand dangling over her head, God, does she have to exude such effortless sex appeal? In a _ sweatshirt _ of all things?

“Thank you for inviting me tonight,” she says quietly. They stand so close together, not even two feet apart, there’s no need for anything louder than the brush of a murmur right now. “I needed it, I think. More than you know.”

Lena laughs self consciously, but when Kara reaches out to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear in a move that’s becoming familiar, her breath catches in her throat. Kara’s hand disappears as quickly as it came.

“Don’t sweat it.” Kara’s closed-mouth smile is sweet like dessert. “You’re welcome anytime.”

Her phone alerts her that her driver is here, and so they exchange their soft goodbyes, the small goodnights that are too delicate to be said louder than a whisper. All too soon Lena is exiting the apartment building and climbing into the BMW waiting for her outside.

Lena would like to say that she at least waits until she’s gotten into bed first before pulling her phone out, but in all honesty she’s still in the elevator to her apartment building when she’s tapping Kara’s name.

And, really? The only reason she doesn’t text her immediately upon leaving is because she can’t think of anything good enough to say.

Lena bites her lip. 

Her groundbreaking, well-thought out masterpiece of an opening text is: _ Hi. This is Lena. _

Kara doesn’t respond until Lena’s making through her front door tiredly, dropping her keys onto the marble counter with a clatter in the serene darkness. Her phone vibrates in the front pocket of her trousers, and she blinks away the harsh brightness of the screen when she pulls it out.

** _hi :)_ **

At only a short, silly text, Lena is already smiling like a fool. Warmth steamrolls low in her gut at just the one word, the goofy smiley face, the surreal understanding that on the other end of the screen is Kara, also probably smiling at her phone. A series of more texts come through immediately.

** _this is a nice surprise _ **

** _long time no see ;)_ **

** _oh what should i save ur number as??_ **

** _lucy's already taken Biggest Brat I Know so i need ur ideas_ **

Lena smiles, because God, how can she be obsessed with someone who's this much of a dork? Kicking off her shoes, she types back. 

_ My Favorite Customer has a nice ring to it. _

The next text comes in as she’s brushing her teeth. 

** _but u don’t even pay for your drinks_ **

_ And who’s fault is that? _

** _pretty sure u started that tbh_ **

** _anyway_ **

** _can we focus please_ **

_ I think the contact thing is supposed to be your job to figure out. _

** _if u don’t give me anything to work with then i’m saving u as lena_ **

Lena crawls into bed with a certain hoodie wrapped about her, her face wiped of any makeup and her hair hanging loosely around her shoulders. 

_ I don’t see anything wrong with that. _

** _just lena?_ **

_ Yes. _

When Kara sends a screenshot of Lena’s contact info, just her first name and nothing else, she can’t deny the blanket of satisfaction that envelops her. She’s not Lena Luthor, the sister to somebody smarter than her, the girlfriend of someone more famous, the face on a feature she had nothing to do with.

To Kara, she’s just Lena.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i give up. how do u actually write a scene w more than 3 ppl? im gonna go take a nap


	6. you look so pretty and i love this view

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and that's why i love fall

“Lena, come on, I’m eating.”

Tongue between her teeth, deep in thought, Lena peers around the edge of her phone. “What?”

Across the table from her, Sam waves her fork over her salad and then wags it in Lena’s face as if she’s gesturing to Lena’s entire being. “This, the giggling, all that. It’s fucking weird, I didn't even know you knew how to use your phone. And I thought I told you to sleep with the girl, not shack up and marry her.”

Lena smirks. “Don’t be so dramatic. We’re just texting.”

“Yeah, sure. I can hear the church bells already.”

Lena rolls her eyes and sets her phone face-down on the break room table. “I know you haven’t been on a date since high school, but this is how things work these days. You text a lot first. It doesn’t mean anything.” Lena pauses. “I think.”

“Yeah, don’t act all high n’ mighty on me yet. You have no idea what you’re doing either, do you?”

She grumbles at that, picking her phone back up indignantly. “I do, thank you very much.”

Sam lets out another theatrically loud exhale. “Lena, how often a day do you text this girl?”

Lena shrugs distractedly as she types a response to Kara before answering Sam. “I don’t know, few times a day. Bit in the morning when she wakes up, bit at night before I go to bed.”

“Right, and when are you seeing her next?”

“Um.” Lena purses her lips, reads a response from Kara, and types with a small smile as she responds to Sam. “Think she’s teaching me how to bowl Wednesday night when she gets off work. Some place uptown that’s open late.” 

“What? Lena, you were a three-time bowling champion at MU.”

“Yes, but she doesn’t know that.”

“...Okay, whatever, fine. And when did you see her last?”

“I went to her place to meet her friends over the weekend, you already know this. What exactly are you going on about?”

“Lena, have you even fucking kissed the girl yet?”

Lena doesn’t even look away from her phone screen. “You’d be the first to know if we had. But like I said, it’s just texting, we don’t need to make an ordeal out of this.”

“When do you even have time for all of this?” Sam stuffs a large mouthful of spinach into her open mouth, talks around it. “You stay at the lab until way after dark every night, you’re the first one in every morning, and I_ know _you sneak Jack’s unpublished research home to read when you’re not here.”

“Kara works late hours,” is Lena’s half-assed, end-all be-all explanation for Sam, though it’s mostly because she’s concentrating on what she’s texting the bartender rather than any actual intention to be cryptic.

“Oh give me that.” Sam stretches out to snatch Lena’s phone. “What the hell are you two even talking about?”

Lena sits back, nonplussed. “She’s trying to figure out whether she can get away with wearing a maroon belt to work tonight because she can’t find her black one, so she’s sending me pictures and I’m trying to tell her no one will be able to tell the difference.”

Sam’s eyebrows furrow together as she looks intermittently between Lena and the phone.

“Because the lights are red,” Lena clarifies, unsure as to what about this is confusing for Sam. “Everything looks red anyway.”

Sam slides Lena back her phone with a sigh. “You really embarrass me sometimes, Luthor.”

xx

Lena spends a few hours after lunch working on genome isolation to get the amphibian research moving again in that department, but gets positively nowhere. There’s a cloudy, fuzzy whirl of disappointment in herself, but she’s certainly not surprised. Feeling a pull behind her eyes, she decides to take a quick coffee break and heads down the hall. She’s actually waiting on some footage documentation to download from the back servers, and she’d be waiting around at her desk mindless anyway, and so this is her reasoning for not feeling guilty when she pulls out her phone.

Kara answers on the third ring.

_“Hey you. I thought you’d still be at work.” _

“I am,” Lena says switching a capsule in the Nespresso. “Still have a few more hours, but I just wanted to say hi.”

_“Well, hi.”_ Lena can hear the dorky smile.

“Have you left for work already?”

_“Ah, no, I’m just finishing getting ready. How’s work? Save anyone’s life today? ”_

Lena sighs. “Not even close. I’m pretty sure I’m moving backwards at this point.”

_ “I dunno that science works like that.” _

“It does, actually. Didn’t you know? I’m on track to set oncology back twenty years if I keep this up.”

Kara laughs but quickly adopts a scolding tone. _“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Didn’t you just start like two weeks ago?"_

“Well, yes, but—”

_“No buts. It takes more than a few days to save the world, Lena.” _

“It can, but it doesn’t have to. I have a lot of wasted time to catch up on.”

_ “How do you mean?” _

Lena bites her lip. She’s gotten to know Kara pretty well these last couple weeks, and, sure. She’s opened up around the other woman, she can talk a little about growing up around money, about boarding school — the basics, safe territory. But there still lingers an anthology’s worth of detail and background that Lena has omitted, that Lena doesn’t know how to pencil back into the narrative. Things like, how she’s spent the last seven years since college, who her ex is, her last fucking name.

“Nothing. Just, progress can never be too soon, right?”

_ “You can’t rush genius, though.” _

Lena smiles, pouring a dollop of almond milk into her coffee. “Watch me.”

xx

As planned, Lena stops by Roulette around closing two nights later when Kara’s finishing up work. Veronica gives her a droll, flat look when she waves Lena through, and Lucy calls a nonchalant greeting once she makes into the otherwise empty bar. Kara, on the other hand, is fumbling to get her arms through the sleeves of her bomber jacket, trips over a broom behind the bar, just barely avoiding a fall, and hops out in front of Lena breathlessly.

“Hi!” she gasps with beaming smile when she sees Lena. Kara squirms like a dog chasing its tail to find the other arm hole of her jacket.

“Hey yourself.” Lena raises an eyebrow bemusedly, tempted to help Kara but wondering how long it might take her herself to figure this one out.

“Take your time, you know,” Lena says sincerely as Kara rushes to get her bearings. “I’m not in a rush.”

“You’re not, but she is.” Lucy rolls her eyes, locking up the register. “She’s been talking about this all night. Think it’s the highlight of her week.”

Kara throws her beanie at Lucy. “I have not.” 

“You have, babe.”

Kara huffs. Lena reaches out to untuck the ruffled collar of her jacket with a small smile, and the blonde relaxes again, sways into Lena’s touch.

“It’s okay, I’m excited too,” Lena says in a low voice that only Kara can hear.

The bowling alley is further uptown, closer to where Lena lives than Kara, in the center of the city’s tourist hub where most everything is open late, if not all night. At first, the idea of such a public endeavor made Lena’s skin crawl, has her tossing anxious looks over her shoulder. But from the way Kara talks about it, with the after-midnight black light theme and privacy of sticking to their own lanes, being recognized shouldn’t be an issue. It’s bowling, for fuck’s sake. Who would squint in a dark, loud gaming facility to make out if Lena Luthor was in their midst? 

So. It’s completely fine.

Okay, Lena might have said she doesn’t know how to bowl, because, well, she’s seen enough 90’s rom-coms to know how this goes. She knows it means Kara slides her warm hands over Lena’s when she tests out differently weighted bowling balls, helping her judge which is best suited for her. She knows it means that Kara stands behind her when they step up to the red line, that Kara adjusts Lena’s fingers in their grip on the ball, that she strokes over Lena’s arm to show her how to get the right kind of swing, how to flick her wrist, how Kara sets her broad hands down on Lena’s waist to urge her stance.

Fuck Sam, Lena’s totally got game. 

The infectious way Kara laughs when Lena turns back to look at her and wiggles her eyebrows, how Kara blushes when Lena nudges herself back into Kara’s frame, it’s all so dizzying and thrilling that Lena’s thoughts couldn’t possibly be any further from their environment, from her worries earlier in the night at being recognized.

It’s dark, it’s loud, there’s probably thirty or so lanes on this side of the building, and everyone’s too busy in their own games to pay them any attention. With the strobing blue, green, red lights dancing around them, how Kara’s teeth glow wickedly when she smiles under the black light, how they can barely hear each other over the obnoxiously computerized EDM music blasting around them — it’s like a dream.

Besides, it’s all priceless in the end when Kara finally steps back to let Lena take her shot, and she expertly shoots the magenta ball down the lane, how it curves beautifully into a perfect strike. The first one is cute, Kara claps boisterously for Lena, wraps her in a bear hug and spins her around while Lena slaps at her shoulders with screams to let her down.

But after the fourth strike in a row, Kara’s less excited and more baffled.

Lena spins back to her with a cheeky smile. “Guess you’re a great teacher.”

The deep, intense frown between Kara’s eyebrows, her pouty lips and the way she crosses her arms just adorable enough for Lena to consider snapping a picture. “Why do I get the feeling I’ve been punked?”

Lena plops down onto the plastic seat beside her with a wide grin and slips her hand over Kara’s knee. “Because you have.”

Kara takes in the scoreboard to see how drastically behind she is, sighs exasperatedly, and stands for her turn.

Lena wins, in the end. By a landslide. She does manage to talk Kara into a second game, if only because they already paid for it, but by the end of that one, Kara is losing her mind.

“Literally, how, Lena? _ How? _ How are you so good? Have you broken the Guinness World Record for most strikes in a row? Are you an Olympic bowler? Are you the prodigy child of an Olympic bowler?”

Lena presses her lips hard together to keep her laughter in, but she fails horribly, hardly manages to stop herself from keeling over at Kara’s upset.

“How could you do this to me?” Kara goes on, waving a hand. “I put my heart in soul into teaching you the perfect backswing just for you to stab me in the back like this? I’m ruined, Lena. Ruined.”

“Darling, I’m sorry,” Lena laughs, running her hand soothingly along Kara’s shoulder and around the slope of her neck. If she takes into appreciation the defined muscle tone under her fingers, it’s just a subconscious thought. Mostly. “You just sounded so excited to teach me, and I didn’t want to break your heart.”

Kara huffs. “Consider me heartbroken.”

“Will it make you feel better if I buy you pizza?”

Kara purses her lips, puts on her best impression of considering the offer. “Yes. Yes it will.”

So the bowling part itself doesn’t last too long, and after returning their shoes, Kara quickly drags Lena over to the opposite end of the alley to the concession window, and Lena does nothing to mask the sloppy smile at having Kara’s hand intertwined with her own.

She first tries to buy them just a few slices, but at the way Kara clears her throat, she concedes to a whole pizza.

This is how they end up at a red punched-metal table, eating too-greasy pizza that dangles limply from their hands and slurping sugary sodas Lena normally wouldn’t be caught dead consuming. But nothing could taste sweeter than the way Kara laughs so unabashedly, the way Lena’s cheeks ache from smiling.

“You know,” Lena starts, taking a quick sip from her Sprite. “I haven’t done this in so long.”

Kara wrinkles her nose. “Been bowling? Don’t even give me that crap, Lena, you have to practice at least on a weekly basis.”

Lena laughs, shakes her head. “No, no, I mean, just — this. Go out, have fun, be normal. I can’t remember the last time I felt I could let my guard down in public like this.”

Kara tilts her head cutely. “Can you not usually go out in public?” 

“Oh, I mean, you know, just how lately—”

Lena stops herself so abruptly she can feel the kickback of anxiety like a visceral yanking, some external force reaching into her mouth and sucking back her tongue. She was so, so blissfully content and at ease, and Kara talks so openly like she’s known Lena for years that she—

Just for a second— 

She forgot who she was talking to. Who she, herself, is.

Kara still stares back at Lena with furrowed eyebrows and a confused smile, patiently waiting for Lena to deal with the way her brain is short-circuiting right now and how reality is clambering down on her like bricks. 

Lena shakes her head to clear her thoughts. “I just, um.” She forces herself to take a deep breath, physically splay out her thumping heartbeat, relax. “It’s been a while since I’ve felt this… comfortable around someone. I’m not usually a very trusting person, because I think, I mean it just feels like most people really do have ulterior motives, you know?”

Kara nods minutely, her eyes whole and immersed. 

“There’s always a catch,” Lena goes on, picking at the plastic top to her cup of soda and shyly glancing away from Kara’s face. “With anyone, they always want something from you, or — or they’re playing an angle. And I’ve never been very good at figuring that one out, deciphering who’s who. So it’s always been easier to assume everyone is like that. With most people in my life, even the ones I was supposed to be closest with, there was always this barrier, this gap I refused to close because I never let my guard down. Not really, not completely.” Lena blinks up to look at Kara, who meets her gaze head-on. “But with you, for some reason I can just… relax.”

It’s so loud in the bowling alley, the noise is cacophonous, cumbersome, palpably everywhere. But right now, there’s just them, there’s just Kara’s pale eyes and undivided attention, just the soft way she looks at Lena like she couldn’t possibly say the wrong thing right now.

“And I know I’m extremely private, and you are so, so incredibly patient with me, it probably seems insane that this is me actually being _ vulnerable _ .” Lena laughs dryly, nervously. “But when I’m with you I feel like I can breathe. And — yes, the worries are still there, I’ll probably always be paranoid, but it’s easier to quiet them, put them aside. With you, it’s just, it’s _ this _.” Lena waves between them. “It’s just this, it doesn’t have to be anything else.”

There’s still the crushing waterfall of anxiety once her mouth closes, the typical fretting that she has indeed said too much, that this is all too soon to admit, especially to someone who she just barely came to think of as a friend. There’s that childish, nervous edge that Kara will think she’s being melodramatic, will judge her for how she feels. 

Lena’s never been very good at believing anything but these doubts. She usually succumbs to them, in fact. 

But even before Kara says anything in response, Lena feels like she can push that aside. She can squash it down, tell it off, stifle it until it’s so quiet that she barely hears it anymore. Because Kara’s not like that, she doesn’t judge Lena and she never asks more of her than she is capable of giving.

Finally, after a prolonged, stunned silence, Kara positively melts with an incredibly bright smile. “Lena,” she whines. “You can’t make me cry onto my pizza, it’ll ruin the cheese.”

Lena laughs, and Kara pouts, and that’s all it really comes to. Kara’s a little bit teary-eyed, but Lena’s also a bit overwhelmed by how emotional she’s feeling, how heavy such a vague announcement feels to come off her chest. And of course, the ever emotionally-available Kara, picks up on that, and doesn’t let the intense moment between them sit for too long, quickly reroutes with her silly jokes and goofy personality.

Just a simple, genuine smile and some shared eye contact is all Lena really needs in response. As if to say, _ it’s okay _ . As if to say, _ me too. _

The rest of their meal and time at the bowling alley steers completely away from sticky emotions and heartfelt moments, thankfully. Lena’s not sure she could handle being any more vulnerable than she already has been, even if she didn’t really say anything that specific, hasn’t revealed anything _ that _ groundbreaking and personal about herself.

But Kara gets it. She doesn’t have to.

“Oh by the way, I forgot to tell you,” Kara starts once they’re done eating and they’re depositing their trash into a bin. Kara rubs her greasy mouth with the back of her hand, to which Lena makes a noise of distaste and snatches a napkin flippantly for her. Kara, rolling her eyes, makes a theatrical show of wiping her mouth again with said napkin. “_ Anyway _, Nia’s having a Halloween party this weekend and she told me to make sure you’re free.”

Lena, distracted by the way Kara’s still licking her lips, blinks. “Me? Why?”

“‘Cause she wants you to come. Was that a rhetorical question?”

“Oh.” Lena blinks. “Really? Are you sure?”

“Yeah, really. She said she thought you were funny.”

Lena’s just barely manages to keep her jaw from hanging agape. “I mean, of course, I’d love to come. But, are you sure she was talking about me?”

Kara flicks her crumpled napkin back at her. “No she was talking about the other cute customer I’m always hanging out with. Yes, you, dork. My friends really like you. Is that so hard to believe?”

A rush of heat blooms in Lena’s cheeks as she throws away Kara’s napkin absent-mindedly. Did Kara just call her cute? “No, no, of course it’s not. Yes, I can be there. I mean, if you’d like me to. And if it’s alright with everyone else. I just, I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

Kara stares down at Lena with curious regard, a slow smile spreading across her lips. Lena feels particularly exposed under a gaze like that, so quietly scrutinizing.

“What?” 

Kara says nothing for a moment, shakes her head. Holding the door open, she holds her hand out to indicate Lena walk ahead first. “Nothing. I’ll find out the details and text it to you tomorrow.”

They leave the bowling alley, eventually say goodnight as Kara waits patiently with Lena for a Lyft to pick her up. It’s not until Lena turns to Kara with a timid smile, all of a sudden stupidly shy and once again over-analyzing how to properly say goodbye to someone she has a massive fucking crush on but could very well just consider her a really emotional friend, that she remembers earlier. During their first game, when Kara had spun Lena around like she weighed nothing, Lena squealing in her ear — it was their first hug, and Lena hadn’t even thought twice about it.

Actually, the entire night they’d been physically touching, someone’s hand always on the other, whether it was when Kara was guiding Lena’s body into the right position or when Lena was consoling Kara over being a sore loser, or their feet were just bumping together aimlessly under the table.

It had been so fluid, natural even. So why does she pause now? Now, under the tangerine glow of the street lamps, watching Kara and the strands of her blonde hair that blow around her face in the breeze. Lena thinks she’s tired of second guessing herself.

Lena rocks forward on her toes and snakes her arms around the taller woman’s neck, presses into her warmth, feels the soft skin of her neck against her cheek. “Good night, Kara.”

Something feels irrevocably proper, infinitely safe and secure, when Kara’s arms wind around the small of her back and hold her close, when she feels Kara’s frame tense at first contact in surprise but immediately relax into the embrace.

Lena can’t explain it, and she probably will never try to, not to anyone else, but standing on the crowded, grimy street in the center of National City’s most touristy strip, outside an overpriced bowling alley, Lena feels more at home than she ever did in Metropolis.

Maybe that’s too theatrical to say. Maybe she shouldn’t have said everything that she did about how much Kara already means to Lena, and maybe she’s fucking naive to let herself care this much about someone she’s only just met.

But for once in her life, Lena just wants to let herself fall, be damned the consequences.

xx

True to her word, Kara send over the details the next day for Nia’s Halloween party that weekend. Kara conveniently waits until late Friday night, however, to let Lena in on the essential piece of information that it’s a costume party. And so she spends most of her Saturday raiding Sam’s closet for costumes leftover from her years of trick-or-treating with Ruby, an afternoon with the two Arias girls laughing and putting on a fashion show.

There is one set back, though, early on. “Hey Sam?”

“Hm?” She doesn’t turn away from where she’s braiding Ruby’s hair.

Lena purses her lips, takes in the numerous costumes her friend has offered her to try on. “Do you have anything that’s… well…”

“What?”

“I mean, these are all a bit revealing, don’t you think?”

She hears Sam huff as she clambers to her feet, comes over to where Lena stands by the closet. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, where are the costumes you wore _ after _ you had Ruby?”

Before Sam can answer that one, Ruby shuffles in between the two women and grabs for the black lace material of a strapless, gothic corset that would show off a sinful amount of cleavage, and answers for her. “Mommy wore this one last year.”

Lena’s jaw drops. “_ Sam _. Tell me you did not wear that taking your kid trick or treating.”

Sam tilts her head, looks over the corset the Ruby is currently wiggling into in front of the mirror. “Yeah I did, so? I looked cute as F-U-C-K.”

It does, sure, Lena imagines Sam looked fantastic, and neither of the women acknowledge Ruby’s cheeky, “You know I can spell, right?”

The rest of the costumes are mostly of a similar variety. Which, normally this would be fine. It’s actually not all that surprising that Sam likes to show off her sexy legs this time of year, and honestly Lena would usually be on the same page. Really, she’s not knocking the confidence, Lena’s been photographed herself in a few… mature costumes, over the years.

She just isn’t all that prepared to have so much of her skin on display going to a Halloween party with a bunch of people she barely knows. Lena doesn’t know if this is the kind of thing you show up to in a thong and lace bra with cat ears, or like, is Kara going to be dressed as banana? Anything’s possible. Not very shockingly, Sam’s costumes are of little help, and she ends up rejecting all of them, but she does make use of the rest of her wardrobe. Although, when she’s knocking on Nia’s door later that night, she shifts uncomfortably as she tugs her long white dress shirt down over her thighs, second guessing that it might be too cold for this.

“Lena!” Nia exclaims when she opens the door to her, her jaw comically dropping. “Oh my God, are you Holly Golightly? You delightful woman, I fucking love you.”

It hardly required much effort at all, she could push a sleep mask up over her hair and borrowed some tassel earrings, it’s a simple endeavor, albeit if the shirt is too short and Lena really should have worn shorts underneath this. But the red-faced, stuttering mess that is Kara when she finds her is excruciatingly adorable, with the way her blue eyes blink over Lena’s bare thighs and flutter up over Lena’s chest where Sam insisted on one too many buttons undone.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea.

Kara, on the other hand, is in a perfectly fitted Supergirl costume that shows not an inch of skin, but it grips at every toned muscle in her body, and Kara’s wearing contacts, her long hair is down in waves, and oh, Lena might ask someone to open a window.

It’s all the same people Lena met from game night the weekend before, minus Lucy and Kelly, who are still caught up working at Roulette. There’s a few others from the bar, and some friends of Nia and Brainy’s from school. Lena nearly faints when Nia introduces her to a couple of them as a friend of Kara’s, panicking at being recognized, because these aren’t people from Roulette, they’re just college kids — but she pulls her sleep mask a little lower on her forehead to obscure her face, and no one is the wiser. It’s not like anyone would expect to see a Luthor at an understated, intimate party such as this anyway, pants-less and on the arm of a bartender.

They play some Halloween-themed games, drink some green punch, listen to good music, but mostly it’s just laid-back socializing with fun snacks made to look like spiders and ghosts. At one point, Kara dangles a piece of dark red-stained spaghetti over Lena’s face when she’s deep in conversation with Brainy about a quantum theory article she read last week, and Lena lets out a blood-curdling screech when it drops onto her and she flails to get it off of her. When she realizes what’s happened, and finds Kara doubled over with laughter, she starts beating the bartender with an orange, pumpkin-shaped pillow. 

After the crowd thins down to the friends she knows, they watch an old horror movie. There’s a good amount of squishing and squeezing into whatever space anyone can find in the small living room while Nia breaks out every blanket she owns. Which, inevitably, leaves Lena on the far end of one of the couches tugging her shirt down and Kara curling up close beside her, sharing a soft throw together. They’re not cuddling, Lena is very certain of this. If they were cuddling, she’d be leaning her head on Kara’s shoulder, or Kara would have her arm around Lena or something. Sure, their sides are pressed together and maybe Kara’s foot is hooked under Lena’s bare ankle, and _ maybe _ Lena’s arm is resting on top of Kara’s, but that’s just the way they fit together to make more room for everyone else on the couch.

Obviously. It’s completely platonic

And, so like, maybe she spends the night at Kara’s that night because it’s nearby, and Lena’s a bit tipsy from the punch and Kara’s being all protective and cute and concerned and pretty. 

Okay, she’s pretty drunk. Same thing.

After hopping into a pair of Kara’s comfy sweatpants and a too-large t-shirt, cleaning her face of the sticky lipstick and tossing her sleep mask onto Kara’s bedroom floor, Lena curls contentedly into the mountain of pillows on Kara’s bed. Dreamily, happily, she is completely surrounded by that sweet coconut-lime scent of Kara’s body wash and it’s intoxicating. If Lena weren’t already drunk then she’d be hammered off the smell of Kara alone. 

Actually being in Kara’s bed is really not as much of an ordeal as Sober Lena will consider it in the morning, considering how a week ago she almost had an aneurysm about just seeing Kara’s apartment for the first time, and now she’s sleeping over, _ in her bed _ . But when Kara starts grabbing sheets from the bedroom closet and makes back out in the living room, Lena realizes that Kara means to sleep out on the couch or in Alex’s room, and that will simply _ not do _.

Yes, she’s perhaps a bit whiney and petulant when she insists Kara come back, that they’re close enough now to share a bed. She maybe threatens to sleep out in the building hallway if Kara doesn’t come to bed in the next five minutes.

It’s fine. Apparently Sober Kara really gets along well with Affectionate Drunk Lena, knows how to appease her.

She’d probably be more mortified if she actually woke up with Kara in the morning. But when the sun’s finally high enough in the sky to come round at the right angle and lands on her face, Lena, mumbling, blinks open her eyes, and the other side of the bed is empty.

(She did wake up in the middle of the night, maybe around five or six in the morning, with a horrible cotton-mouth, deliriously still half-asleep, and sort of understood that she was being spooned by someone deliciously soft and warm, but for all she knows, it was a dream)

When Lena pads out into Kara’s kitchen, rubbing the migraine already setting in behind her eyes, probably looking like walking death, the bartender is at the kitchen stove flipping pancakes.

It’s like one in the afternoon, and she hasn’t slept in this late on a Sunday since her heavy partying days with Siobhan. When she’s awake enough to wrap her mind around this she starts to apologize to Kara profusely about taking up her space and time, but Kara just rolls her eyes and shushes her.

“Lee, I only woke up like half an hour ago. Don’t even worry about it.”

It feels important to store into her brain that it’s November third, the first time that Kara calls her Lee, but not the first time that Kara saying her name makes her stomach swoop.

They eat pancakes, and Lena’s a little too nauseous to be eating at all so she mostly just picks at hers, but Kara happily finishes them for her and instead blesses her with some fresh-squeezed OJ she’d already gotten from a market downstairs, and Lena gets through her hangover happily.

They don’t spend the day together, Lena has far too much work to catch up on, after having spent the day before with Sam and Ruby and then the party. Kara lets her borrow a pair of jeans and the same NCU t-shirt she slept in, thankfully, so she doesn’t have to perform what feels like a walk of shame in her costume. The jeans hang too low on Lena’s hips, but she couldn’t give less of a fuck, because Lena’s greedy and, in addition to the hoodie at home, she is slowly but surely stacking up a fantastic collection of Kara’s clothes. 

Their hug in Kara’s doorway lasts longer than a morning goodbye warrants, not when they see each other as often as they do, but Lena chalks it up to their mutual sleepy exhaustion. This time her arms fit around Kara’s waist, Lena’s face buried into her shoulder, and she swears she could fall asleep right then and there, standing and all. But someone makes a small hum, she’s not sure which of them really, and the hug ends and it’s a goodbye as soft as every other. One that’s not really goodbye, just a promise for later. Because there’s always a later, Lena realizes.

Every time she sees Kara, the bartender seems actively intent on ensuring they have plans to see each other again before Lena leaves. If not right then, then Kara will text Lena immediately after to find out when they can see each other again. Lena’s not quite sure how Kara isn’t sick of her yet, they hang out at least twice a week if not more. Of course, she’s smitten and naive enough to text Kara back every day at least, even if it’s just a few succinct messages here and there before and after work, a morning greeting and a midnight farewell. No, Lena’s definitely not sick of Kara. Hell, she’d see her every day if she could.

On November 5th, Lena makes a small (read: very small) breakthrough in her research, and it’s practically nothing, barely a hair of progress, but it’s something that moves forward a trail of investigation that’s been sitting stagnant for most of the year in Sam’s lab. It means running more simulative tests on the servers under a new perspective, under slightly different parameters. It means a very low-key dinner with Sam that night to celebrate the small win — because Lena’s learning it’s okay to appreciate the small things, it’s important to stop, take a moment to show gratitude for any progress at all, for healing. It means after dinner, she and Sam stop by Roulette for a nightcap, but it becomes a few more and a conversation with Kara and Lucy that lasts over an hour. Sam gets delighted by Kara’s corny jokes, Kara seems impressed by how Sam magically tames Lucy into actually being sweet. It’s strange, Lena thinks, watching Sam and Lucy laughing together while Kara tries to reenact the shot glass trick from a couple weeks prior but failing miserably at getting the right timing. She thinks Kara understands the complicated oddness of it, maybe, because they share a soft look, and Kara has this knowing, gentle, particular smile that Lena’s beginning to think is maybe just for her.

On the night of November 8th, or well, into the early midnight hours of the 9th, Kara texts Lena when she finishes up work and Lena meets the bartender at the boardwalk by the water. There’s no one out at this time of night, just the occasional late drunk partiers wandering home, but Kara’s brought a thermos of hot chocolate from Roulette and they sit on some stone steps in front of a statue overlooking the port. They pass the hot drink back and forth, and in the late-year, late-night breeze, it’s still rather cold, so maybe Lena scooches closer so her side brushes up against Kara’s, and the blonde just closes the gap entirely and they press tight together for warmth (just warmth). Kara ends up sliding back onto a step higher and behind Lena, and then Lena is just hugging Kara’s knee and hungrily absorbing the contact. Lena asks Kara about her family, how she was adopted, what that was like, and Kara tells her about growing up with Eliza and Alex, how they gave her so much love when she felt like she’d lost her entire world when her birth parents died. She talks about the conflict of loving both, of being thankful for her new family being a part of her life but still wishing her birth parents were here today, that she often misses their guidance. She talks about her relationship with Alex, the ups and downs, the financial blows during Alex’s lows and the tumultuous emotional roller coaster of them both coming to terms with her addiction. Kara seems reluctant to say anything more about Alex’s addiction, as if it’s still too sensitive a topic for her, and she leaves it instead on a note of how much she adores her older sister, how she would do anything for her to just be happy. This leaves Lena at a breathless loss, because logically she knew what family was supposed to mean, she’s seen the sacrifices Sam’s made for Ruby, but it’s something entirely different to hear Kara talk about her sibling in such a given, unconditional way.

Lena confesses she’s adopted too, that although her birth mother and Lionel are both also passed, there’s still Lillian. Lena doesn’t talk about Lex, not by name, doesn’t even talk about having a brother. But she tells Kara about a chronic desperation for perfection, about never feeling like she’s living up, constantly being reminded she isn’t. Kara listens, she always listens, just listens. As Lena talks, her hand rests behind her on the cobblestone to hold her weight, and at some point Kara lets her hand fall on top of Lena’s, and it stays there until they leave, and they don’t really talk about it. They don’t talk about how, when they walk back to a busier street where they can call their respective rides home, Lena’s hand just sort of falls into Kara’s, stays there. Their locked hands swing between them, and Kara’s grip is loose around Lena’s fingers, but she doesn’t doubt that Kara won’t let go.

On November 12th, one of Lena’s coworkers, Jess, sits with Lena in the breakroom. She doesn’t talk much, but she tells Lena that she heard she got the amphibian cell regeneration project up and running again, and Lena learns that Jess studied aquatic biology in college. Although the other woman is in the department focused on improving radiation therapy, Lena piques her interest with an offer to work together on her new revived project. The next day, November 13th, Jack approves the transfer, and when Lena calls Kara after work that night to talk about how nice it is to have someone else with her in the lab for once, Lena thinks she’s starting to forget how loneliness tastes.

On November 15th, Kara texts Lena a picture of some blue raspberry cotton candy that now sits on the bottom shelf of her pantry, with an added message beneath it. 

**_saw some at the store and thought of you_** **_:) come and get it_**

On November 17th, the other shoe drops.

Lena leaves work early. Which is to say that she leaves on time for once, at six when most everyone else usually clocks out. But Kara has the night off, and she never has Fridays free, so it’s something they’re both keen to take advantage of, considering their time together is almost always after midnight. An evening together is different. And where before treading on new territory was terrifying to Lena, now the chance to see Kara when she’s not delirious from the late hour or half-asleep from having just woken up to meet Kara somewhere, it’s thrilling. So yeah, she can afford to not stay after hours one night before the weekend.

She makes a stop by Sam’s office on her way out. “You need anything before I go?”

Sam doesn’t look up from her computer monitor. “No. Just please get laid tonight. I’m frustrated for you.”

Something in the tight-knit, focused way Sam’s eyebrows come together makes Lena smile. “Hey, you know I love you, right?”

Sam does wager one look up at Lena, and something in Lena’s delightful smile must disgust her, because the woman grimaces and makes a gagging noise. “God, seeing you all happy and in love is so weird. Get out of here.”

Lena’s still smiling when she knocks on Kara’s door, a jug of apple cider in hand, and Kara looks equally excited by the juice as she is in seeing Lena.

They just end up watching a movie, which isn’t anything very extravagantly novel for them. Lena imagines Kara might’ve had something in mind that involved going out, actually making use of places being open while they’re awake, to do something they couldn’t do at three a.m., if only because the blonde is wearing jeans and a gray Northface sweater, her makeup done. But Kara doesn’t so much as even suggest they go anywhere when Lena tiredly sheds off her coat and blazer and collapses onto Kara’s couch, sinks into the cushions.

After Lena feels the couch dip beside her and she blinks an eye open, she finds Kara regarding her with fond amusement.

“Feel-good rom-com or satirical indie drama?” Kara asks.

Lena waves a hand tiredly. “God, I don’t care. Surprise me.”

It’s that easy.

As Kara flips through her Netflix queue for a particular movie, she splays her arm along the back of the couch behind Lena’s head. “How come you’re so tired? Feel like the fumes usually keep you going ‘till a lot later than this.”

Lena rolls her head along her shoulders to fix Kara with a miffed expression. “Kara. You kept me up until five last night.”

Kara purses her lips like she knows where this is going, but continues to play dumb. “Mhm, and?”

“I had to be up at seven for work.”

“Listen, you really could’ve hung up whenever you wanted, nobody was stopping you.”

Lena groans dramatically and closes her eyes again.

At some point during the movie, after Lena’s been shuffling and shifting relentlessly for ten minutes trying to find a comfortable position, she hears a soft murmur from Kara. The blonde pulls a throw pillow into her lap and is holding her arms open, indicating for Lena to lay down.

Lena feels her ribcage positively melt at the distracted way Kara doesn’t even take her eyes off the screen but beckons Lena into her lap.

It’s not as intimate as it sounds, objectively they’re not even touching each other all that much when Lena crawls over and rests her head on the pillow. Alright, yes, Kara starts to thread her fingers through Lena’s hair in soothing, even strokes, and Lena hums low and quiet, content.

But it’s not a big deal.

Curled up on the couch with Kara’s hand curving a lock of hair behind her ear, Lena can’t deny the magma-rolling swarm of bliss that settles around her, the high of being so at peace, so content. The movie is pretty shit, and Kara balks and stammers onto a long rant when Lena says as much. Lena rolls over onto her back and Kara looking down at her, they’re sort of bickering about what makes a movie good in the first place, whether it needs a complex plot or it’s just enough to make you feel good, when Lena’s phone starts vibrating in her back pocket.

She has every intent to ignore it, but when she wiggles to pull it out to silence it, it’s Sam’s face on the screen. Sam, who knows Lena’s with Kara, who had been pretty adamant that Lena take a break from working so hard in the first place and have a fun night that doesn’t require her to lose hours of sleep due to Kara’s ungodly work schedule.

Lena’s stomach is already twisted when she’s apologizing to Kara. “Sorry, I should take this.” But it’s probably nothing, Lena’s always been pitifully paranoid. So she answers the phone without moving from her spot laying in Kara’s lap, and she swears the way Kara’s thumb starts to rub mindlessly at a spot behind her ear is meant to be comforting, like she can sense the way Lena’s already anticipating the worst.

“Hey, is everything okay?” Lena answers softly.

_ “Um, hey. You’re… are you alone, right this second?” _

Lena glances briefly up at Kara, back to the ceiling. “No. Why?”

_ “Shit, right. Right, you’re with Kara fuck, I’m sorry. _”

Lena can’t help the anxious bile that threatens to rise in her throat. “It’s fine. What’s up?”

She can hear Sam’s swallow on the other end of the line. “_ You should, um, can you maybe step away for a sec? And like, check your email.” _

Lena’s already mouthing an apology to Kara before she’s sitting up and rising to her feet. “Or you could just tell me what’s going on and stop being so cryptic,” she whispers after she’s turned her back to Kara and makes for the bathroom.

_ “It’s just, um, well there’s a bit of a problem.” _

“A problem with what?”

_ “Okay, okay, look, it’s hard to tell but, you know the research I’ve been working on? About all those Guillain-Barre cases popping around but then it seemed to have traits of MS? And they thought it might be some kind of lymphatic infection but then we were seeing a pattern of it in remission lymphoma patients.**"**_

Lena pinches the bridge of her nose. “Yes, what does this have to do with anything? Did you find something?”

_“Look, I, uh… well you know how we give Lord access to our pharmaceutical analyses? And how I said in return he sometimes shares clinical results from his facilities around the country?” _

“Sam, I know all of this. Get to the point.”

_“I found another correlation. Or, well, I thought it was just a coincidence, at first, because, you know, it’s not that astonishing that that they all underwent the same treatment designed for lymphoma, it wasn’t a red flag at first—” _

Lena’s blood runs cold.

_ “But then I did some extrapolative regression analysis and, of course it’s not perfect, the z-score did show a one percent error margin, it’s never perfect— **”**_

Staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, watching the muscles of her jaw dance under her skin, Lena feels herself sink deeper and deeper into herself, her mind pulling taut like rubber.

_“There’s just, um, an incredibly significant correlation between instances of this disease and, and well—” _

“It’s from the Neoremedium isn’t it? Lex’s treatment?” 

A quiet exhale. _“Yes.”_

“Who else knows?”

_“No one. I’m on my way to Jack’s office right now to show him the data but… I wanted you to be the first.” _

Her lower lip trembles. “How many?”

_“What? ”_

“How many people?” she asks, her voice cracking.

_“So far there’s a few hundred cases across the country, mostly on the east coast where his treatment was first used, but the reports over here are increasing."_

“Mortality rate?”

_“None.”_

There was an unspoken _ yet _ hanging between them, a taunting, dangerous implication.

_“I sent you an email with everything I’ve gathered, all the analytical reports and my results.”_

“I’ll read it in the car. Bring Jack up to speed, I’ll be there in twenty.”

_“Listen, it’s late, and I know you’re with Kara, you don’t have to—” _

“Sam.” Lena exhales shakily, braces her hands against the edges of Kara’s pale green porcelain sink, her knuckles white and throbbing. “I’ll be there in twenty,” she repeats forcefully.

Lena quickly hangs up before Sam can say anything else, before Lena can fall apart, before she fractures at the pity and concern in her best friend’s cautioning tone.

“Hey, um, I’m sorry there’s something that came up at work,” Lena says as she reemerges into the living room, toying with her phone in her shaking hands, her wobbling lips pressed tightly together.

Kara rises from the sofa. “Is everything okay?”

Lena reflexively takes a step back when Kara approaches her, and her chest thuds at the furrowed confusion on Kara’s face, the way she stops in her tracks.

“Yes, yes, everything’s fine.” Lena tries to muster up a smile, tries to keep her breathing neutral, because the second she lets Kara see she’s on the verge of losing control of her emotions, she _ will _ break down. And she can’t, she can’t, not this time, not now.

Kara clearly isn’t buying it, if the apprehension in her eyes is anything to go by. “Lena…”

“I have to go,” Lena insists, turning for the door and scooping her coat off the barstool. “I’m sorry, but I'll, um. I’ll text you?”

Kara stands in the foyer of her apartment with her hands loose, helpless at her sides. “Sure. Yeah. Go do your thing.”

It’s not until she’s in a cab on the way to Spheerical Industries that Lena finally allows herself a lapse in composure to fall apart. Just for a minute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why’s lena so good at bowling? cause she likes sticking her fingers in holes
> 
> also i updated the full chapter count to like 16 because i talk too much. we'll see how that goes.


	7. come on and haunt me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don’t even come at me with all the science plot holes im so tired

****If Lena thought she was working long hours before, the next two weeks are nothing in comparison. 

She makes use of the stiff, narrow sofa in Sam’s office at least three nights a week, will go thirty-six hours straight without leaving the building some days, won’t leave SI even to eat, will usually make use of the vending machines on the clinic floor downstairs. She only has something delivered into the lab when Sam becomes too overbearing about adequately balanced sustenance, but it’ll still remain largely untouched if it takes too long to eat, her mind whistling at too high a frequency to sit still for too long.

It doesn’t matter what’s in front of her anyway, it’s all mechanical. Chew off a bite, gulp it down with water. It’s as monotonous as brushing her teeth, it might as well be anything. She doesn’t even take the extra five seconds to pour a dollop of almond milk into her coffee anymore, she has too much of a rhythm to slow down on her quick trips between the drawing board and the Nespresso machine.

If Sam is responsible for keeping Lena breathing, then Jess is the saving grace that keeps her on task. Jess works efficiently and quickly like this is any other project with a fast-approaching deadline. She doesn’t coddle Lena or make sure that she’s getting enough fluids, she doesn’t ask her what it feels like to be on the cusp of reliving the last two months all over again if she can’t fix her arrogant, twisted egomaniac of a brother’s never-ending fatal mistakes. Jess is all pointed professionalism and sharp acuity, she understands that they have a job to get done and pleasantries can be left at the door. 

Her amphibian research has to be put on hold for now. Right now, Lena’s sole focus is learning anything and everything she can about what it is that’s putting lymphoma remission patients back in hospital beds. She’s been in contact with the CDC already to determine that it doesn’t seem to be anything contagious, it’s not being spread to the greater population, and the WHO doesn’t even consider it a matter significant enough for their intervention. Because apparently over two hundred cases of near complete immune system collapse, of people that were perfectly healthy one second and completely incapacitated the next, bed-ridden, only breathing with the help of a machine, heart barely managing to beat on its own — apparently, this isn’t anyone’s priority right now. It’s being investigated, hospitals are interested in the results Sam’s analysis has found, and she and Jack gave a press conference the Monday after Sam’s key discovery was made. 

When Lena first reviewed the patient files in Jack’s office that night, a dread like cold sweat whispering down the back of her neck, her only thought was how could no one have connected the dots on this sooner?

Now that it has been put together, now that SI is at the forefront of discovering a cure, sure, it has the attention it deserves. The spotlight is on them, but no one else seems much interested in lending a hand. The AAMC is officially, on the record, putting the task on Spheerical Industries and Lord Technologies. Lord’s got the data and outreach, and SI has the resources.

From what she and Jess can tell from the files and charts they received from Lord, the main reason this took so long to be narrowed down to one cause, the Neoremedium treatment protocol, is because there wasn’t much connecting the cases. The demographics were all over the place — different ages, ethnicities, climates, occupations. And then not every instance presented the same. For some, the onset was as immediate as Guillain-Barre, only a matter of hours between perfect health and teetering on near complete system failure. Others had logged complaints from prior appointments with their primary care physicians, with symptoms ranging from sudden fatigue and headaches to gastrointestinal discomforts, as soon as days earlier, if not a month, as in a few cases. But wherever they started, they all led to the same eventual end state as the others. 

“But there is one essential underlying correlation Jess and I managed to uncover,” Lena explains flippantly as she takes a sip of merlot. “It’s affecting cells that are capable of being fixed, which is good news. Until we figure out a cure, we have no idea how long the recovery process will take, but we do know it’s possible.”

“Okay,” is Ruby’s chipper response from across Sam’s dining table. She’s coloring in a cutout of a turkey, her Crayola markers squeaking in her small fists.

“But you see, Lord sent over some new data last week. And it appears — so there’s this wall, a barrier, that’s keeping it from reaching the body where it _ would _ be permanent. And it appears that this wall is becoming weaker, and we’re seeing symptoms that indicate the damage might be spreading. Are you with me so far?”

“Okay.”

Lena fingers at the stem of her wine glass, her vision zoning out. “Why this is happening, on the other hand, it’s complicated. We think something about the Neoremedium treatment left some kind of inherent weakness, a vulnerability, so to speak, in this part of their body. Most healthy people have protective mechanisms to prevent this part of their nervous system from being breached like this. What I’m trying to figure out is what exactly is it about my brother’s treatment that’s made them weak like this. However, the problem is that Lex’s treatment was a completely redesigned plan, it wasn’t just any one new process or medication, it was a complete restructuring of the traditional approach.”

“Cool.”

“Because although his treatment did kill hundreds, it also led to thousands of lymphoma patients to go into remission, even some who had originally been given a terminal end-stage prognosis. Except now, we’re seeing a subset of those same people getting ill again with something completely unrelated to the cancer they already beat. All the deaths his treatment was responsible for from _ before, _that was due to an unpredicted, dangerous reaction in people with a certain genetic mutation, one that my brother didn’t predict in his calculations. He would’ve found it, had he done the proper trials and testing that his forged paperwork said he did. But no, he wanted to save money and time, and apparently it’s cheaper to buy out half a board of FDA officials into overlooking what just seemed like a small technicality at the time on a treatment predicted to save millions.”

Ruby caps her marker suddenly, scrunches up her nose cutely. “So like… how come you’re here? Why aren’t you with the doctors and everybody, fixing those people?”

“Because Auntie Lena hasn’t had a proper meal in over a week, and it’s Thanksgiving,” Sam answers affectionately as she comes round the table to press a kiss to the top of Ruby’s head. “Put your coloring away, dinner’s almost ready. And _ you _.” She points a finger to Lena. “Don’t give my kid nightmares. Didn’t I say to take a break?”

Reaching for her glass of wine, Lena rolls her eyes. “Please, she doesn’t even know what I’m talking about.”

“People are dying, and your brother is evil.” Ruby glances between the two adults excitedly. “I pay attention.”

“Nobody is dying.” Sam fixes Lena with a forcefully exasperated look.

Lena drops it after that. She’s going back to the lab first thing in the morning, anyway.

Kara texted her the day before, wished her a happy holiday and invited Lena to a Friendsgiving at her apartment, but. Lena isn’t quite sure how to look her in the eye and pretend she has nothing going on at the office, that there’s more red ink being added to her ledger every minute she stays away from her work. How would she hold hands around a table or whatever it is normal people do, and tell the room what she’s thankful for like people aren’t getting sick all around the country because of her brother _ again? _ She barely even agreed to come to Sam’s, only conceded out of guilt in making the receptionist and security guard at SI work on a holiday, and, well. Being with Sam comes easy, there’s nothing she doesn’t know, Lena doesn’t have to pretend to be thinking about anything other than finding a cure.

It doesn’t change the fact that through the entire meal as she’s picking and spearing at her plate of smoked ham and sweet mashed potatoes mindlessly, she’s completely elsewhere. She can barely ground her thoughts enough to listen to Ruby regal them with the story of how she conquered the lunch room and won three chocolate milks on the last day of school before break. 

It’s a pattern, she finds. Lena’s mind strays wherever she is. She doesn’t leave the lab much to begin with, doesn’t spend many waking hours not working in the first place, but when she does, she’s not present anywhere else. When she’s sitting in the backseat of a Lyft, she’s flipping through updated patient files on her phone. When she’s laying in bed at night setting her alarm for four hours from then, she’s taking making a mental to-do list of which areas of research she should investigate next, what medical experts she can call. When she’s brushing her teeth, she’s scribbling chemical formulas and calculating transmission rates on the bathroom mirror.

But after her Thanksgiving dinner with Sam and Ruby, when Lena’s in bed reading an analytical study on Lex’s treatment from a few years ago, Kara texts her. 

** _hi _ **

** _i just wanted to say that what i’m grateful for this year is meeting u_ **

** _that’s all :)_ **

And for the first time in ten days, Lena falls asleep thinking about something other than her brother and her shortcomings.

There are other various messages from Kara, ones she doesn’t know how to respond to, the ones she doesn’t have time to think about. The easy route is a simple response of, _ sorry darling, big issue at work,_ and an added _ I’m involved in a new project that’s very time-sensitive._

Kara seems to understand, as far as Lena can tell. She gets a plethora of smiley faces and thumbs-up emojis, words of encouragement in response. Lena worries her vague excuse will only last so long, buy her a week tops. But even after two weeks of giving Kara radio silence, wherein Lena sort of forgets she even has a phone for any reason other than its calculator and a means of accessing work documents when she’s commuting, Kara will still send Lena the occasional easygoing, fluid text like nothing’s changed.

** _hope the new project’s going well !! i’m sure you’re kicking those cancer cell butts_ **

Or sometimes there are the random fun facts.

** _did you know the pressure inside a champagne bottle is 3x the amount in a car tire? be careful when you’re celebrating that big brain of yours!_ **

** _btw apparently the human body produces alcohol naturally like, all the time. do u think that affects breathalyzer tests? happy friday :)_ **

Lena will respond, for the most part. Even if it’s just heart-reacting to the message Kara’s sent, or a short _ Haha _ back. Sometimes she sends back a red heart.

It’s just… it would be difficult to explain to Kara. And not because she wouldn’t understand, rather on the contrary, really, Lena worries she would follow along too well. Lena learned that Kara’s adoptive mother was a scientist, a bio-engineer if Lena remembers correctly, and her adoptive father did something similar, and so Kara grew up in an environment where science talk was prevalent, where those studies were encouraged. Kara usually would be modest, but she understood most of the conversations Lena would have with Brainy about stem-cell research or gene theory. Kara knew more than just the basics.

So there wouldn’t be a natural stopping point with Kara if Lena disclosed what she was working on. She couldn’t simply leave it at the notion that her department just works in the oncological field and that this is a new illness falling upon patients in remission. Kara would ask why, she’d be able to keep up and she’d want to know where this is coming from.

Even after the press conference, their work has had little publicity in the media at large. There were headlines in reputable scientific journals of course, sure, some clickbait articles on Sci-News.com, but the general public hasn’t reported on anything SI-related. They have, on the other hand, been discussing the cases themselves and how even when half the Luthor family is out of the picture, whether that be behind bars or dead, they still are causing strife and chaos around the country. There’s social media trends trying to gain momentum in their goals for depleting the Luthor estate of everything they’re worth, and Lena thinks she even saw one poll voting to have her deported. No one cares much that Lena dedicates every waking moment, every neuronal pathway, to fixing this. She’s not sure anyone even knows she’s working at Spheerical Industries at all.

But the point is that Lena would really rather not get to the part of the conversation where Kara asks Lena what’s causing these people to be getting sick, and why that relates to how _ she _ has to be the one to fix this. If Kara so much as gets wind about this illness and is inclined to make the most vague of Google searches, then it’s over for Lena.

Lena likes Kara. She’s not a fool, she knows she needs to tell Kara rather soon who she is before the woman finds out for herself. It’s not like — Lena hasn’t been lying, she’s just private, and Kara respects that. Sure, the closer she gets with the bartender, the more terrified she is that Kara will be disgusted and spite Lena for what her brother’s done, for how Lena let her live in ignorance for so long, that she’ll grab a pitchfork and join ranks with everyone else online. 

But at the same time, Lena feels an inexplicable tug in her chest that urges her to _ trust _.

It’s just, she has other priorities right now. She’ll tell Kara, she will, later, when she has the time. 

The truth is that, as painfully this bends her mind and how much it twists her heart that after all this time, even with her brother behind bars and his terrible treatment no longer in practice, he’s still _ hurting _ people — the truth is that Lena can’t deny the mystifying thrill of what she’s doing. There’s the adrenaline rush of walking through the lobby of SI, her heels echoing, pressing for the elevator, and knowing that the second she steps onto their floor, it’s time to begin. Nothing starts without her, Sam put her at the head of this team.

Because while her dissertation was on genotoxicity, Lena has the strongest foundation for cell decision processes in response to system threats. Over the course of two weeks, with Jess close by her side, she works with various department heads to rule out causes, slowly but surely narrowing down her scope of work.

There’s not even room anymore for opinionated coworkers or awkward breakroom lunches anymore. Over half of the oncology branch that Sam oversees at Spheerical Industries is working just like Lena to find a cure, along with three other departments in Jack’s facility. Any project that isn’t in the midst of a breakthrough is being set aside and on hold, because as the largest research facility on the west coast, they’re the best equipped to find an answer if there is one.

The facility is full of experts, brilliant people who have double or even triple the years of experience in research that Lena has. But somehow, at the end of the day, it’s her everyone turns to. She knows Lex’s research, it was her entire childhood, even before Lex had gotten involved. Yes, Lex had picked up the thread of study their father left behind, and it was the whole reason Lex was so hellbent on _ solving _ it. He was desperate to finish what was started, and maybe Lena abandoned her scientific studies for a life with Siobhan, but she was listening too. There was a time when she was Lionel Luthor’s other prized hope for the future of oncological research.

With Lena’s area of expertise and the homefield advantage of being related to the brains that put this together, she may just be the one person who can make this right, who can lay the infamous, fatal Luthor legacy to rest. It’s exhilarating, dizzying in its power.

But even still, it only takes her to certain lengths. While some days are power walking down linoleum hallways and feeling at the top of the world, a queen of her own making, others are kicks to the gut, leave her gasping and hopeless.

There are the nights she’s stuck and irritable, when she gets snappy with Jess and Sam and her hair is starting to look too greasy to be cute, and she’s forced to go home and concede to her lack of progress. It leaves her with clenched fists in the car, stifling anger that she can’t pinpoint whether it’s directed at her brother or herself. When she hits the shower, she still doesn’t let go, her frame stays coiled and trembling under the steaming rush of water pouring down her backside. She doesn’t cry, she can’t succumb to that, but maybe she allows herself an extra minute of aimlessness under the shower head to just _ breathe _.

There’s one night, it’s one in the morning, and every joint in her body keens with exhaustion when she slumps into her mattress. But even with tranquil darkness and a mind so depleted she could probably cry herself to sleep, the actual sleep doesn’t come. She tosses and turns, flips onto her stomach, onto her back again, pulls the covers over her face. Eventually she’s brimming with a vibrating, restless energy that she bursts from the bed, and she returns only a minute later with an uponed, rather expensive bottle of wine. 

It was something she’d been saving for when Kara finally came over for the first, when she finally was trusting enough to invite her into her home. Kara wouldn’t drink it of course, it’d just be for Lena, but it was supposed to be a celebratory toast to herself for coming to a place of ease with herself, with Kara. Perhaps there’s something sacrilegious, then, in how she uncorks the bottle and drinks it straight from the bottle. It’ll bring sleep on quicker, it’ll put her under, and she’s out of over-the-counter melatonin so this will just have to do.

When she’s halfway through, an urge tickles in her fingers to text Kara. She gets so far as to pull up their conversation, sees the unanswered fun facts, wonders if she can will Kara to try again, text her one more time. If she did right now, Lena would answer. There’s a sharp sting of loneliness blooming through her chest like frostbite, one that Kara always knew how to quell, one that isn’t so generic and ungrounded anymore but focused down to a single person she desperately _ misses _.

She falls asleep before she gets the chance to make a decision.

There are good days and bad days.

xx

At a some point, however, they only get so far, and there’s only so much Lena is capable of.

Lena slams the office phone back down on the desk and storms away, pacing to the wall. “Fucking useless bureaucratic shit bags.”

“Take it they said no?” Jess asks, slumped in her leather seat with crossed arms.

“Of fucking course they said no.” Lena scoffs. “They won’t give me access to the servers his research was stored on, said it’s classified evidence. Does it matter that it could be the key to saving hundreds of lives? No, of course not, because he feds are about as useful as they are smart.” 

Lena grits her teeth sourly, paces back to the desk. “You know, they didn’t even catch him themselves? It wasn’t even any medical association. A journalist was the one who figured it out. A journalist!” Lena barks a laugh. “Took four fucking years before anyone even realized his treatment was killing people, and an undistinguished journalist was the one to expose him.”

“Right.” Jess pushes her glasses back over her head, sits up straighter. “Well, that’s fine, then.”

Lena turns back to her partner, waves a hand. “Fine? What about this is fine? We’re stuck, Jess. I promised Jack I’d have something by now, I promised everyone. But where are we at? We know absolutely everything there is to know about who’s been affected and who will soon, how long it will take for their immune system to shut down, we know the exact condition of the outcome, but still, we have no idea what part of the Neoremedium is causing this degeneration. And until we figure that out? We’ve got nothing. Lex’s research was supposed to be the next step to get us there, and now that route is good for fuck all. So forgive me if I don’t see what about this is fine.”

“Lena.” Jess meets her erratic gaze with steady determination. “It’s fine because it’s what we’re left with. If we’re not getting his research, then that’s that, and we need to move on to the next best thing.”

There’s something bitter in her throat and prickling in her chest when she turns away, jaw taut. “Which is what?”

“You tell me.”

Scoffing just because she wants to cling to this dark edge, ruminate in her petty defensiveness, Lena faces the window with a trembling scowl. Jess is right. She’s overreacting, she’s letting her emotions clout her frustration with the science, and she can’t, she can’t, she _ can’t._ The second she does, this is over, she loses, she knows this. She always thought Lex was so brilliant at keeping his personal life separate from his work, thought it was what made him so genius. It wasn’t until his entire domain collapsed and the truth came to light that she realized everything he did was tainted sick with his emotions, it was dripping in it.

Because Lex always had more pride than anyone. 

How could she have seen arrogance in someone she thought the world of? His confidence just seemed so rightfully placed — why wouldn’t he be assertive that they would single-handedly change the world if she truly believed he had the answer to saving it?

Lena blinks.

“You’re right.” Lena spins back from the window and beelines for her computer, sliding into the chair.

“I mean, I know that,” Jess says wearily, coming to lean over Lena’s shoulder. “But what are you doing now?”

Lena’s already selecting a flight by the time she answers Jess. “I can’t get his research, so, it’s like you said. I have to go to the next best thing.”

xx

Before she leaves the lab that night, hyperactively organizing the paperwork she needs to bring with her together into a pile, Sam stops in the entryway of the lab.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Lena continues to skim distractedly for a specific toxicology report. “Of course. Honestly I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of this sooner. If anyone knows the data better than me, it’s Lex himself. He’s the key, he’ll know how to fill in the blanks.”

“Forget the research, Lena, I’m talking about you. Are you sure that you’re ready for this?”

Lena stands with a confused expression. “This isn’t about me. He has the answer, I know he does. I’m not going to let hundreds of people die again while I sit idly by contemplating my feelings.”

“I’m not saying do nothing.” Sam sighs, her shoulders drooping forward. “Seriously, you’re already doing the work of three people, and you’ve made so much headway on a cure and it’s only been a couple of weeks.”

“Sixteen days. It’s been sixteen days, and these people are only getting worse. It’s not enough.”

Sam shakes her head and steps further into the room. “And what about you? Just send someone to talk to your brother, or I can try talking to the authorities this time. You’re going to burn out if you keep like this.”

“Oh please.” Lena laughs. “So I’m cutting corners on my sleep schedule and eating irregularly. It’s not going to kill me, and this isn’t any worse than how we lived in college. Lex won’t talk to anyone else, it has to be me. I have a responsibility to fix this, don’t you get that?”

“Of course I do, but Lena—”

“There’s not buts,” Lena says exasperatedly, facing her friend with thinly veiled frustration. “Darling, I love you for caring so much about me, but I have to do this. If I’m not ready now, then I’ve got a six hour plane ride to sort it out. And if I need a lifetime of therapy to deal with this afterwards, fine, you can drive me yourself to every appointment and I’ll tell a shrink all about how inadequate my brother’s always made me feel. I will. But for now?” Lena shakes her head, gives a tired smile. “I’m getting the answer I need, whatever it takes.”

Lena scoops her work up from the lab bench and turns to leave. Sam’s face is twisted with uncertainty, and she regards Lena with such fragility that it makes Lena nauseous down to her knees. She knows Sam cares, that she only means well, but Lena doesn’t need a friend to hold her hand right now. 

Just before Lena’s opened the door, Sam speaks again, her back to Lena. “I know you think you have something to prove here, that you don’t deserve to be happy until you’ve accomplished something.”

Lena stops for just a moment, her hand resting on the door handle.

“But you don’t have to be a hero to be worthy.”

She doesn’t let her voice waver this time. “Maybe not. But I can certainly do both.”

xx

Once her plane lands in Metropolis the next day, and she switches airplane mode off on her phone, she’s greeted with cautionary notifications from the tabloids she tracks announcing that she was spotted going through security back in National City, and she can now expect reporters to be waiting for her outside baggage claim. Honestly she last thing she wanted was for anyone to know she’s back, certainly not Siobhan, but she’d been in such a rush to get here that she hadn’t even considered taking the extra precautions.

The one upside of being back in Metropolis is that she did phone ahead to have the family driver waiting for her, and he always was an expert in navigating the congested city streets and losing paparazzi tails.

“Welcome back, Miss Luthor.” He nods curtly as he opens her door for her, his six-foot-plus figure commanding and powerful when he presses the reporters back from the car.

“Thank you Marcus,” Lena sighs as she settles back against the crisp, familiar leather. “I didn’t take you away from your other responsibilities, did I?”

He’s not much of a man for facial expression, can’t be having an opinion when you work for someone like Lillian, but the slight twitch at the corner of his thin mouth suggests something of a smile. “Nothing that Mrs. Luthor can’t handle herself, ma’am.”

So at the very least, Lillian would know Lena’s in town either way.

She’s not so worried about her mother reaching out — or maybe the more difficult-to-swallow notion is that she might not at all — but she is rather cautious of how it will look if anyone follows them to the prison. She’s in a rush if there ever was one, can feel the adrenaline thumping through her veins and a twitching agitation to find out everything she needs to know as soon as possible, but if discretion is only guaranteed by Marcus taking the long, winding route, so be it.

As far as plans go, Lena doesn’t have much of one. To be honest, she’s not sure that it’s really even sunk in that she’s about to see Lex. She wasn’t lying to Sam the night before, she really did spend the flight over flipping and kneading her emotional turmoil associated with Lex, really tried to address the root of how she feels about him. But she just… didn’t find all that much. 

Of course there was fresh disappointment, polished and bright, like it’s been sitting on display for anyone to see for two months now. There’s hurt, definitely, but it doesn’t surpass the exhausting, incredible anger she feels for how reckless and pompous he was with his designs, an anger on behalf of everyone who died and everyone who’s sick now. There’s just something intangibly meaningless in how she feels about him now. Like he’s not her brother anymore, not that tall, goofy kid who never quite fit into his tuxedo. Lena can’t even pinpoint when exactly she lost him, wonders if she was even there to see him die or if it happened while she was away.

Perhaps that’s the emotional unrest she needs to deal with, the brother who’s gone now, the one who clapped her on the shoulder and cradled her close, whispered with brilliant confidence that she’d be right alongside him changing the world someday. The man she’s en route to see is not that loving boy, the only person that came even close to resembling light in the darkness of her childhood. She’s not worried about what it’ll do to her to see him because that version of Lex is dead. Maybe he never really lived, maybe Lena was blind and romantic about everything, she’ll figure that out later. For now, she has a meeting with just another arrogant jackass who thought the world was only created to serve him.

She came here for a job, to get information and details. It’s nothing more.

When she’s only a few minutes away from the prison, she gets a text from Kara.

** _did u know cotton candy was invented by a dentist? u can totally eat ur heart out <3 _ **

Lena chuckles, a small thing at first, but then it morphs into a full-body laugh that’s got a thrill of elation seeping through her. She’s either on the brink of a complete meltdown or she’s finally getting a grasp at stable competence when facing a world of strange, debilitating obstacles. 

But regardless of which it is, it’s breathtakingly freeing to know Kara’s still there.

She’s got a few minutes, Lena reasons, pressing the phone to her ear.

Kara answers almost immediately. _“Hey stranger.”_

Lena smiles. “Hey yourself.”

_“Can’t believe cotton candy really was the way to your heart all this time. I’d’ve mentioned it days ago if I knew that. You know I bought some for you, right? It’s still in my pantry.” _

“Yes, I was just waiting for you to figure it out.” Lena bites her lip, fingers the lapel of her coat. “I’m sorry. I know I haven’t been around.”

_ “It’s cool, you’re a busy gal. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.” _

“Thank you, Kara.” Lena looks out the window, sees the signs for the prison growing closer, knows she only has a couple minutes tops. “I just wanted to say thank you, for the sweet messages and being so patient. But I think, maybe, things should be back to normal soon.”

_“Oh yeah? ”_

“Within the next week or so, I’m hoping. I’m looking into a resource today that should prove… promising.” Lena takes a deep, stabilizing breath. “If I’m right, it’s just the breakthrough I need.”

_“Nice. If you need me to bully anyone for information though, say the word. I’ll send Lucy.” _

Lena laughs, her mouth stretching wide in a way that’s already grown unfamiliar again, and she makes an impulsive decision. “I’ll keep you posted. But yes, soon things should be settled down and I’ll be finished with all this. And then… I was hoping maybe we could talk?”

The car is pulling up through the security gates of the prison and her driver is speaking quietly with the guard, showing their identification, when Kara answers. 

_“Oh, uh, okay. Sure. Is everything okay?”_

“Yes, everything’s fine, it’s nothing bad I promise.” Lena bites her lip, still smiling. “There’s just some things I want to share with you. About me.”

The other end of the line is quiet, and Lena’s running out of time, so she presses. “Is that alright?”

She hears the other woman clear her throat. _“Yes, yes, I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.” _

Lena presses her mouth together in a tight smile, feels warmth all the way down to her fingers. “Okay. I’ll call you soon, then.”

_“I'll be here."_

xx

It’s not until the last three seconds before Lex is escorted into the visitation room that Lena, very briefly, panics that she’s overestimated herself and that this all was indeed an enormous mistake.

But then he shuffles into the room in shapeless, beige cotton, and his cheeks are unevenly shaved, smears of restless exhaustion under his eyes, and Lena deflates. She looks at him, this shell of a man, and she feels nothing.

“It’s about time,” he grumbles as he slumps into the metal chair across from her. “You bring the Xanax I asked for? I’ve sent you five letters already.”

Lena stares at him impassively.

“No? How about some Twizzlers? I’ll take anything at this point.”

Lena sits forward and clasps her hands together. “I need to ask you about your treatment. The molecular structure of the drug you added to the chemotherapy, the breakdown of the energy you used for radiation, I need to know everything. Why you bribed the FDA officials, where you cut corners, what you were hiding.”

Lex leans back in his seat with loose shoulders. “Oh come on, you could at least pretend as if you want to catch up.”

“I don’t.”

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, that’s why you pretend. So how’s Siobhan?”

“Lex. This is important.”

“Yeah, so’s my baby sister’s love life. You’re not pregnant, are you? That’s not why you’re here? Because I’m really not ready to be an uncle.”

Lena grits her teeth but refuses to let her gaze falter, to back down. “People are getting sick again, Lex. And whatever it is, it’s not the same as the toxic reaction from before. I’ve narrowed down all the biological properties of the disease, I know its population and I know the timeline. But I need to know what you did to figure this out.”

Lex tilts his head to the side, eyes sloping over Lena like he has all the time in the world. “I didn’t realize you cared about the science. You finally get tired of Hollywood? Or did they get bored of you first?”

“I’ve always cared,” Lena says evenly, but she can feel the rough edges of her composure wavering.

The way his lips pull back is less of a smile and more like a snarl. “Right, is that why while I was working on making the revolutionary scientific advancement of the century, you were busy posing for camera shots outside Madison Square Garden? Yeah, Lena, we can really see how much you care.”

“I should have been there, I know.” Lena works to steady her breathing, to keep her hands from shaking. “I think about that every day, if I had stayed, if I had helped you, then maybe things would be different, maybe I would have seen something you didn’t, maybe—”

“Come on,” Lex interrupts. “Cheek is not a good color on you, Lena, you must know that by now.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot there’s only room for one prodigal narcissist in this family.”

“If that’s what you want to call my lifelong dedication to saving millions of lives, be my guest. You were the one performing in front of a camera like an animal in a circus.”

Lena pitches forward and runs her hands over her face. “Oh my God, Lex, I’m not here to fight with you.”

He continues to stare at her with incriminating disdain, all cold edges and gray contempt. And then something of a droll smile perks up the corners of his mouth, a slow upturn, and he laughs. “But we were always so good at it, don’t you think?”

Lena sighs, her shoulders falling tiredly. This stoic front, showing how little she gives a damn about her brother, it’s getting her nowhere, and she’s too tired to bicker endlessly with Lex only to inevitably walk away with nothing. With her disheveled clothes wrinkled and askew from the flight, minimal makeup and bloodshot eyes, she certainly can’t be faring any better than her brother in appearance. She’s tired, not stupid, but maybe there’s a sore spot here that she can capitalize on.

“I don’t have an angle here,” she tells him, her hands falling into her lap. “I’m not here to rub your nose in your shortcomings.”

“Why not?” he asks with a laugh. “Because that’s what I would do to you? Are you trying to prove you’re the noble one, more virtuous than me?”

“No.” Lena’s chest clenches, and she looks for that wrinkle of vulnerability between his eyes, perhaps a flicker of the boy she grew up with. Maybe she pretends it’s there, if only to make this easier to force out. “Because I don’t think you actually would. I always felt lacking, standing behind you for our entire lives Lex, but that wasn’t your doing. You did everything you could to welcome me in.”

Lex huffs as he crosses his arms. “You know I think I liked it better when you were insulting me. This sentimentality is stifling.”

“You’ve always been full of shit.” Lena laughs, puts on that serene smile that always softened up Lex’s bravado. “But I need your help. I can’t do this without you, Lex.”

He stares back at her across the metal table, and Lena holds it well. There’s a reason he was so adamant about teaching her chess when they were little. Deep down, Lena thinks all he ever wanted was someone who could measure up to a challenge against him.

With a theatrically long, dry sigh, Lex sits forward, slumps his chin into the palm of his hand. 

“Alright. What do you want to know?”

Lena smiles, a smart, sly thing as clean-cut as immaculate lipstick.

xx

When Lena’s tugging her jacket back on and rising from the table, getting ready to leave, she chuckles under her breath. 

“What’s so funny?” Lex asks, watching her with the same twinkle of amusement he had when they were kids.

“Nothing.” Lena shakes her head, because now that she’s gotten what she came here for, there’s relief in tampering down the sympathetic play. “It’s just… I really can’t believe you thought this would work, that there wouldn’t be consequences. Did you just think you were above protocol? That safeguards don’t apply to you?”

The creases of Lex’s face immediately darken, sag with distaste.

“But you know what’s really so twisted?” Lena goes on, tying the belt of her coat around her waist with a look of exacerbated disbelief. “You actually would’ve gotten away with it if it hadn’t of been for that article. You really had the whole world convinced you could do no wrong.”

Lex is quick in his anger. “That journalist didn’t know what she was talking about.”

“Well clearly she did, or you wouldn’t be here right now.” 

Lex’s fists clench over the table, his frame stiffening. “Our father died from the very thing he dedicated his life trying to cure. I was the only one smart enough to rise up to the challenge before it was too late for someone else’s family.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t smart enough, were you?” Lena says mockingly.

“No, but neither are you,” Lex snaps. “Not if you really think that Danvers girl is the saving grace for this society because she got lucky connecting a couple dots.”

Something slips inside Lena. Stutters, a trembling hiccup. The room spins into blurring focus, and she slowly, slowly, slowly lifts her head. “What did you just say?”

Lex comes quickly to his feet, clapping his hands to the table. “I’m the genius that fortified the science, I’m the one that studied under Dad for decades, and guess what? I saved _ thousands _. You really want to paint me a villain because I was so desperate to help people that I expedited the process a little? You think Kara Danvers cares about helping anyone?” 

Lena’s heart comes slamming to a stop in her chest, nearly cracks her body in two.

“I was the hero, Lena.” His lips twist down into a snarl, a manic glint to his eyes. “I was the one destined to save lives. What did she want? What was she working towards? Getting her name on a fucking byline for her fifteen minutes of fame.”

The room is spinning, something acidic is rising in her throat, and all Lena can do is stare at her brother.

Lex seems to realize he’s touched a nerve, because he slows, takes a step back from the table to examine Lena, as if he can’t put his finger on where her snapping point was.

It’s a coincidence, it’s a coincidence, it’s just a coincidence.

She can see Lex mentally backtracking, and she knows her mouth is parted open like pale-sheeted ghost, she knows her hands are so fucking cold all of a sudden that she’s not sure she’ll ever warm them back up again, she knows she’s floundering, she knows she’s breaking.

This can’t be happening, no, he’s talking about someone else, he’s mistaken, he’s fucking with her, this can’t be _ fucking _happening. She’s a bartender, Kara’s a bartender, Lena knows this, it’s how they met, Kara’s corny jokes and an amber cocktail and bright shining eyes, there’s no conceivable, possible way they’re talking about the same person.

Her tone crackles like ice, arctic in its imbalance. “How do you know that name?” 

Lex fixes her with a bewildered apprehension like Lena’s lost her damn mind. “Danvers? The reporter? She wrote the article you’re talking about.” He glances around him like there might an audience. “I’m sorry, are we having the same conversation right now?”

When her lower lip starts to quiver, Lena knows she has to leave. She quickly sucks in her panic like ice-cold oxygen, runs a hand through her hair and avoids her brother’s eye. “Thank you for your time, Lex—”

“No, Lena wait, what is it? Why are you—”

“—I appreciate your input and I’ll keep you updated on any new developments.”

“Just _ talk _ to me.”

“Goodbye, Lex.” 

She’s already got her hand on the door and her back to the room when he gets it.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Lee. Don’t tell me you’ve been talking to her.”

Lena stops, her knuckles white around the silver handle of the heavy set door, her heart hammering in her ears like claps of thunder jolting her off kilter. She can’t move, she can’t say anything, she can’t think of anything but that fucking name, that brilliantly crinkled smile, those mishaped freckles, the weight of a hand at the small of her back, the soft murmur of a quiet, sleep-heavy voice over the phone, the sweet aroma of a sweater in her bed, the unabashed delight in a jovial laugh, _ oh _, Lena thinks she’s going to be sick.

When everything comes to a peak, when there’s nowhere else to scramble to, Lena does what she knows best.

“You’re a lot of things, Lena, but Jesus I never took you to be a fool.”

She runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tag yourself, i'm ruby coloring in the turkey


	8. denial makes me high

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like i'm writing the plot to a magic school bus episode on biology
> 
> anyway here's an early update cause i didn't feel like studying for my quiz. there wont be an update this wednesday but hopefully i'll get one up next week :) enjoy
> 
> p.s. thank u to everyone who takes the time to comment! they honestly make my day and i love reading your ideas! y'all r great

Lena’s hands don’t stop shaking all the way back to National City.

They’re shaking when she exits the prison, her head held low as camera flashes burst like insects. But their shouted questions and calls for her to look over, all the noise as Marcus guides her into the car, it’s muffled, swimming, hazy. When the door closes after them and the sounds from outside or muted, she’s not sure she hears a difference, and her hands are still shaking.

They’re still shaking when she hands her boarding pass over to the flight attendant, when she buckles into a first-class airline seat and pulls out her laptop. They’re still shaking over her keyboard as she types up everything Lex told her, clinging to her memories of everything he said  _ before _ and nothing  _ after _ and desperately trying to squash down the stray array of thoughts flying around and trying to break her focus.

They’re still shaking when she strides into the lab at eight p.m. and she’s dragging over a file from her cloud onto the desktop with everything of Lex’s research that she’s transcribed. When Jess disappears to get Lena the tech she needs, and only minutes later the glass double doors to the lab are hissing open and Jack and Sam rush inside, Lena’s leaning over the desk and typing up the finishing touches to a program.

“Why’s Jess trying to cop Imra’s CAR T-cell computer?” is Jack’s first question, hesitant, weary.

Sam is all brilliant eyes and ecstatic grin. “You figured it out, didn’t you?”

Lena lifts an eyebrow, hands still shaking, and doesn’t look up. “Of course I did. Were you worried?”

Half an hour later, Sam’s hovering over Lena’s shoulder as she plugs the CAR-T computer into an isolated simulation chamber. “I don’t understand, how do you know this’ll work?” 

Just as Lena goes to answer, Imra bursts into the room with Jess hot on her heels.

“I told her you said—” 

“You have a lot of fucking nerve, Luthor,” Imra snaps, coming round the bench to her computer. “I don’t give a damn how much money you throw at Jack, you can’t just put a multi-million dollar project on hold over a hunch.”

“It’s not a hunch.” Lena’s smile is soft, sympathetic, but firm. “You’ll have it back by the end of tomorrow.”

“You know this completely throws me off schedule, right? Cellular engineering can’t just be paused, it’s not a movie.”

“Let her talk,” Sam interrupts, glancing between Imra’s trembling fury and Lena’s steadfast nonchalance.

Lena bites her lip. “It was something Lex said.”

“Oh, we’re working with the bloody psychopath now, are we?”

“Imra.” Jack levels her with a sharp stare, and the other scientist crosses her arms.

After a few more keystrokes on the specialized computer, Lena slides over to her own desktop and starts pulling up data. “For weeks now, Jess and I have been looking for a foreign agent that’s targeting the axons specifically. All we can tell is that seemingly at random, their myelin is weakened and degenerating too quickly for the glial cells to repair them. The only connection we have is Lex’s treatment plan.”

Imra’s nostrils flare at Lena’s mention of her brother again, but she stays silent.

“Part of why his treatment was so successful in the first place was the agility with which it worked.” Lena pulls up a sketch she did on the plane of a chemical structure. “Lex designed the drug in his chemotherapy specifically to expedite the process, had the body working twice as fast to attack the cancerous cells. You see this?”

Sam’s eyebrows knit as she leans closer to the monitor. “I don’t get it, it doesn’t look that different from your standard alkylating agent. It’s just…”

“Smaller,” Lena finishes. “More precise. It makes sense, honestly. Chemo traditionally can’t differentiate between the body’s regular fast-producing cells and cancerous ones, it’s why it’s so taxing on the body. But Lex’s idea was that if he could make a drug that would target the right ones, and twice as fast, then the right cells would be destroyed before we could even see side effects in the patient.”

“I don’t understand.” Jack waves to the monitor. “It wasn’t your brother’s chemo that triggered the original mutation in everyone that died before, it was the radiation. Shouldn’t we be looking there?”

“Yes, and that’s exactly what Jess and I did at first. We were looking for where the radiation must have weakened their system, but it wouldn’t make sense why  _ now _ , why after all this time we haven’t seen any issues.

Lena turns in her chair to face them. “Basically, what’s happening is the drug wasn’t just attacking the cancerous cells by itself, it was using the rest of the body’s cells to all attack at once. That’s why it was so fast. It couldn’t work alone. The only problem is that — it was like training the perfect army, and it won. But now there’s no enemy, these cells have nothing to attack. Except over time, it started to see the myelin encasings as no different from the cancer, and one day it’s like a switch.” Lena snaps her fingers. “The body starts attacking itself, and we see complete shut down that we’ve only ever seen in cases of Guillain-Barre.”

“Okay, great, you figured out why it’s happening. So what does this have to do with my project?” Imra asks, though less challenging and more attentive now.

“Well I was thinking about how he engineered the drug to turn the body’s cells into what he needed them to be, and it got me thinking about the engineering you’re doing. You’re in the business of designing cells to fight against cancerous ones, are you not?”

“Well, yes, but it’s hardly that simple—”

“It doesn’t need to be.” Lena purses her lips. “We don’t need to design them to fight anything. We just need to shut it off.”

“Shut… what off?” Jack asks.

“The white blood cells. They’ve been programmed by Lex’s drug to fight against an infection that’s not there anymore. We just need to reprogram them back.”

Imra pinches the bridge of her nose. “That’s the most CW synopsis of a complex scientific procedure I’ve ever heard. Who exactly do you expect to even know how to write that kind of program?”

“Me.” Lena pulls up a document of code on her computer. “I already wrote it on the plane.”

Jack is scratching at his beard. “So you just… wrote that. In a couple hours.”

“Five. It’s essentially taking the theory from my dissertation on cell-decision processes and incorporating a regeneration sequence I discovered in my amphibian research, and using the technology from Imra’s CAR T-cell apparatus to implant it.”

Sam sighs shakily, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. “It sounds great in theory, but, again, how do you know this will even work?”

Lena turns back to the chamber where she’s set up a simulated version of the average patient’s central immune system. She peers through the microscopic lens, and resists a smirk when she looks back at her colleagues.

“Well. It already is.”

As they all rush close to inspect the results for themselves in the simulation chamber, Lena swallows thickly, takes a step back.

Her hands are still shaking.

xx

Lena feels like her head is going to explode and that her skull will come away in pieces in her hands when she gets a text from Kara two days later.

** _me winn and james are going bowling tonight if u wanna show them what a superstar u are_ **

** _no pressure tho :) hope ur making progress_ **

Lena is in the bathroom splashing water in her face, trying and failing to control her breathing, feeling as if her heart is going to collapse out of her chest in a bloody mess over the porcelain sink. She stares at herself in the mirror, watches the droplets trickle down her face, curve around her chin and drip back into the sink. 

_ You’re a lot of things, Lena but Jesus I never took you to be a fool _ .

Lena fixes her running mascara and walks out of the bathroom with magma behind her eyes.

xx 

There are articles about her achievement, a few over the next week, but none that headline with how people are recovering, or what a reputable research facility Spheerical Industries is. Some don’t even mention Jack, Sam, Jess or Imra altogether until they get to a list of contributing scientists as a footnote. No, they’re all just talk of how the “other Luthor” is cleaning up a family mess, most speculating on whether she should even be allowed to contribute at all, whether her cure can be trusted. Some obscure fanatic websites go so far as to say that she and her brother are actually working to save humanity by actively killing the “weak links.” Which, it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t care what people are saying about her, she didn’t do this to be recognized or redeemed by the public eye. She doesn’t care about that. 

But there’s something nerve wracking in how little the media cares about how many more people could have died if she and her team had taken any longer to fix Lex’s legacy, about the rest of the work they’re doing, about anything other than what the sister of a criminal is doing these days. 

Although it’s not like Lena’s thinking about anything but gossip journalism either.

xx

Google is usually the first place most people go, isn’t it?

Lena types  _ luthor,  _ she types  _ kara danvers, _ and she types  _ treatment failure. _

It’s the first result, it’s an article Lena’s already read it a few times, of course she did, months ago when it was first released.

She’s not sure what she’s hoping for, maybe Lex was off, maybe it was a Kiera Danvers, Kara Daniels, maybe he was just simply mistaken, maybe he’s been keeping tabs on her and just knew how exactly to fuck with her head, maybe he didn’t know what he was talking about.

But it takes all of thirteen seconds on the internet for Lena to click a CatCo Media link to the article that changed her entire life, to see the name at the top of the page, bright as day, the one she never paid much attention to before, the one she didn’t think twice about.

** _The Massacre That Won a Pulitzer_ ** _ by Kara Danvers _

Lena slams her laptop shut.

xx

After a few glasses of wine, she types Kara’s name into the CatCo website.

How could she be so  _ stupid? _ So blind, so naive, so fucking childish and in denial to think Kara didn’t know who she was? She studied journalism, for fuck’s sake. Did Lena really think that just because Kara was at Roulette working when the 9 o’clock news comes on that she didn’t at the very least tune in to watch one of the biggest scandals of the decade? 

But no, she didn’t have to watch it, she didn’t need to catch up on anything because she’s the one who wrote the damn story.

Among the search results, Lena doesn’t find very much.

The article in question comes up along with a few others that mention Kara by name, but only when referencing the original publication on Lex. There’s no title to her either, no  _ fellow reporter Kara Danvers, _ no  _ renowned journalist, _ nothing. She’s just Kara, just an apparent nobody who came out of nowhere with a story of the decade.

When Lena takes it back to Google, still, there’s not enough for her to go off of. There’s a few dozen Facebook profiles, some Instagram handles, but nothing public. It should have been a red flag, in this day and age  _ everyone _ has social media, and not once had Kara ever tried to connect with her on anything. Lena had assumed it was because of who  _ she _ was, how  _ she _ was private, that Kara was respecting  _ her _ boundaries. Lena never considered that Kara herself might have something to hide, and Lena’s cheeks burn both from the wine and the overwhelming humiliation from being so blind.

When she finds a LinkedIn account for a Kara Danvers based in National City, she opens an incognito window and lurks.

It’s sparse, and clear that Kara doesn’t upkeep it very much. It only has her restaurant experiences listed, all of which Lena already knows about. Her current employment is listed only vaguely as  _ Bartender at National City Club & Bar _ , not a breath or mention of Roulette, and — of course — no affiliation with CatCo. There’s a hyperlink to the ever-looming article, a brief summary of its contents, but it’s nothing more than a highlighted status update. She doesn’t know what this confirms and what it rejects, if it means anything at all, but Kara’s smiling in her LinkedIn picture and it makes Lena’s bottom lip wobble and so she refills her glass. 

Lena scrolls next through what few connections Kara has, tries to find a single contact with anyone at the major west coast media company, but she finds nothing. 

She does, however, find a connection to a reporter at the Daily Planet in Metropolis.

She looks up  _ clark kent _ this time, and it doesn’t take long until she’s at a blog page. She knows what this is, she knows how this goes, she’s seen enough of these by now, has clicked on countless links for these sorts of pages when she wants to torture herself or cling to the awful, villainous image of her brother in her head.

Clark Kent died on September 9th of 2018, almost a year to the date of the publication of Kara’s article.

There’s a video of a memorial service from a month ago, with beautiful, melodic music played on a harp and tragically elegant white flowers and massive groups of people gathered to remember someone lost. And then there’s a stage and there’s Kara’s stepping onto it, tapping at the mic, saying,  _ “My cousin can rest now that the truth is out _ .  _ I found it for him and for every other family like ours. May they all finally rest now. _ ”

Tears are streaming down Lena’s cheeks when she buries her face in her arms, but they’re dried and crusted over by the time she takes a second bottle to bed.

xx

“Hi, this is Kieran Smith, I’m calling from the LA Talk Radio about an article one of your journalists wrote a couple months ago on Lex Luthor, believe it was Kara Danvers?” Lena leans back against the bathroom stall door and twirls a strand of her hair around her finger. “I was hoping you could put me in touch with her. Wanted to see if she was interested in an interview for a new episode we’re doing on the Luthor family.”

“Uh-huh, hold please.”

Lena’s on hold for nineteen minutes. Nineteen minutes of gnawing on the dead skin of her cuticles, of pacing in the small bathroom stall before she moves to pace around the whole bathroom, of feeling silly, of scuffing her heels at the trash bin.

“Ms. Kieran, are you still there?”

Lena nearly slips on the linoleum floor. “Hi, yes, I’m here. Hi.”

“Yes so, Miss Danvers doesn’t actually work here, my apologies to make you wait.”

Lena’s almost too scared to even breathe at this point. “She doesn’t work there anymore, you mean?”

“No, she was never employed with us. The article you are referring to was a freelance piece. But in reference to the show you’re currently working on, would you perhaps be interested in—?”

Lena ends the call. 

Looking back at a pale face and bloodshot eyes in the mirror, Lena wonders if this is what Lex looked like when he lost his mind.

xx

There’s a voicemail from Kara a few days later, six days since she visited Lex.

_ “Um hey, it’s me. Kara, I mean. Just wanted to check in and see how you’re doing, how work’s going and stuff. Ummm… yeah. I hope you’re doing okay, that work’s good, all that. Um, give me a call? Or a text, like, whenever you can. No rush, obviously, I know you’re suuuper busy.”  _ There’s something like a cough, but Lena thinks it’s supposed to be a laugh. _ “Anyway, yeah. Just text me when you can so I know I don’t need to file a missing person’s report or anything. Um. Yeah. Bye.” _

Lena doesn’t know what to do, what to say in response. 

She imagines busting Kara’s door down kicking and screaming, slapping her across the face and asking who she is and why she didn’t tell Lena that she’s known who she is from the beginning, letting her rage uncoil and shake the building.

She imagines crying, holding Kara’s face in her hands and begging her to explain this in a way that makes sense, to tell her it’s all a big misunderstanding, to feel her strong arms wrap around her and feel like the world doesn’t always have to be such a big awful place.

She imagines cold indifference, imagines the way that’d make Kara flinch away more than anything Lena could say, imagines Kara being the one to fall apart while Lena stands strong.

None of these scenarios do much for making her feel better.

She texts,  _ Sorry. Had a breakthrough, been celebrating with Sam. Call you soon. _

Lena doesn’t know what kind of celebration lasts almost two weeks, but it doesn’t matter. If Kara knows who she is, then she’s probably keeping up with the news and already knows Lena made a major scientific discovery, and this kind of thing would normally warrant such celebration. Kara’s not one to question it, Lena doesn’t think.

Although whether she really knows anything about Kara in the first place is up for debate.

xx

Lena’s had a lot of low moments in her life, she went to an all-girls boarding school and was the daughter of a billionaire, the younger sister of a dangerously narcissistic sociopath. She’s been involved in questionable things, done some sketchy shit, there’s maybe a thing or two on a court-sealed record. But that’s all in the past now.

She has never, on the other hand, actively, and consciously followed someone. In person. Without their knowledge. For three days. 

Stalking, fine. Lena knows this technically qualifies as stalking, but following sounds better and makes her less queasy about her actions. 

Yes, so she rented a car with tinted windows at ten p.m, drove to sit outside Kara’s apartment building, watched her come in around three in the morning, and then called out of work around six the following morning to keep watching. It’s surprisingly easy to let the time pass for hours and hours without activity other than a tired bartender trekking off to bed, especially when Lena’s whole being vibrates with anxiety for what she might see.

She’s not sure what she’s looking for, can barely scrabble for any rationalization for how she’s resorted to this. But nothing’s adding up — there’s a plethora of puzzle pieces piling up in front of her, one consisting of how Kara studied journalism but claims to ultimately not have pursued it, how she truly does seem to have no experience whatsoever but then comes out with arguably one of the biggest stories of the century in a world-famous publication like CatCo without actually, officially being employed there. Kara just  _ decided _ on a whim to find the truth about what happened to her cousin, found it, and her first point of action was to sell it to a media company? And Lena is supposed to believe that Kara isn’t actually employed there, that she just dropped that dream and is continuing on with her life as a bartender, and she just  _ happened _ to befriend the sister of the criminal she exposed? There’s something she’s missing, a crucial layer of perspective that would glue this all together, and as far as she’s concerned, it all comes down to two options.

Either Kara had an angle in befriending Lena, or she didn’t. 

And Lena’s always been too paranoid to believe in coincidences.

But she thinks that the longer she digs only to come up with nothing, the closer she comes to considering the latter possibility.

The first day, Kara doesn’t even leave her apartment until half past five when she’s headed to work, and Lena follows along behind the bus to confirm she is indeed going straight to Roulette. Lena takes the opportunity to snooze a few hours, parked in an obscure side alley with a view of the employee exit, and she wakes around three to make sure she catches Kara leaving. It’s harder at night to keep an eye out every time the bus stops, to see if Kara gets out. It’s too dark to see, but in the end she does manage to track Kara back to her apartment and the bartender makes no other stops on her way home. Lena’s not sure where Kara would even go at such an obscene hour that might incriminate her, might give Lena something to work with, but her skin thrums with nervous energy if there’s perhaps the slightest chance she misses Kara for even a second.

The second day, as in just a couple hours later, Kara leaves early. Like, earlier than Lena thought Kara was even capable of waking up, this is the woman who sleeps past noon on a regular basis. It’s just after six a.m. when the blonde exits the apartment building with her hood up and in joggers, and she must have barely slept two hours but her skin still looks radiant in the pink morning light of a waking city. 

When Kara glances both ways before crossing the street, Lena barely gets a few seconds to realize Kara is walking  _ towards _ Lena, and she scrambles to sit low in her seat so fast that she wonders if she should have gone into the business of surveillance.

Kara strolls by the car without so much as a glance, and Lena hears the faint hum of her whistling as she passes on by.

Lena thinks this is it, her fingers are trembling when she turns the keys in the ignition and trails along to follow where Kara might be going at this ungodly hour. But then Kara gets onto the south-bound subway, and Lena can’t find a parking spot quick enough. When she loses her, Lena slams her hands in frustration against the steering wheel, earning her a few dirty looks from passing-by pedestrians.

Okay, so maybe surveillance isn’t exactly for her.

Head slumped forward, aggravation with herself clouding her senses like a surreal dreamstate, Lena forces herself to breathe. She swallows thickly, rubs her tired eyes, and regathers her composure like picking up the pieces of broken ceramic.

If it’s too late to find out where Kara goes, then in the meantime Lena can just wind back around to Kara’s apartment and park across the street again. After calling out of work once again, she pulls up the subway system map on her phone, studies it closely. Kara went into a station for the downtown line, but CatCo is uptown on a completely different line, so she’s not sure what to make of that but she reasons that this isn’t the most devastating setback. She’s not going to have a meltdown.

Considering Kara already lives downtown, though, there’s not much elsewhere for Kara to actually go unless she was heading out of the city into the more provincial outskirts. There are the suburbs, factory districts, smaller towns that the subway spreads out to but it ultimately ends a few miles out until it reaches the airport. And if Kara is headed  _ there, _ then Lena might actually lose it.

She manages to tamper down her panic long enough for Kara to return about an hour and a half later. She pulls up in a taxi this time, and she’s not alone. Lena’s can palpably feel the rush of blood through her ears, her steadily rising heart-rate as Kara steps onto the curb and turns back with her hand held out to the other passenger. It could be anyone, could be Cat fucking Grant for all Lena knows, and this feels like an essential turning point in her surveillance that her grip on the steering wheel is stiff and taxing on her hands. 

Whoever it is swats Kara’s hand away, and Lena of course can’t hear, but she sees Kara throw her head back and laugh, her face taken up in a bright smile that strikes a familiar pang in Lena’s gut, has her shifting in her seat and clearing her throat. Kara then she steps back and an auburn-haired woman climbs out after her. It’s not until Kara winds round the back of the car to the trunk and is pulling out a red suitcase that it sinks in.

Alex, Kara’s sister. Has it really been over a month already? Lena feels like she just checked into a hotel room in National City and was browsing apartment listings last week. 

A twinge of guilt surfaces as she watches the two sisters, how Kara slings her arm joyously around her sister’s shoulders, the eruptive glee on her face as they head inside. Lena wonders if Kara’s anxious about her sister’s return, if she was overwhelmed or reserved, if she needed someone to talk to about it, if she would’ve confided in Lena about it at all.

Lena swallows down the thoughts, tucks them away with a shake of her head.

Kara lied to her, it doesn’t matter how she feels.

(Did she lie?)

The two Danvers women don’t leave for the rest of the day, even when night comes, and so when it’s pushing on nine p.m. and she’s sure Kara’s not going anywhere, only then does Lena head home to crash onto the pillows exhaustedly. Sitting in a car for nearly forty-eight hours with only cheap, lukewarm coffee and Kind bars was taking a toll.

Not to mention the pulsating dread and twisted thread of putting together a story that doesn’t want to be unveiled.

Lena doesn’t dream.

The third day of Lena’s detective antics is also her final day. Mostly because if she calls out of work one more time after this, Sam might actually show up at her apartment in a whirlwind of mothering panic and drag her to the ER by the ear. Although it is Friday.

But also because, after a quick breakfast with her sister at a cafe near their apartment, Kara heads back out into the city. Lena is better prepared this time, has already parked her car at a garage, has her sunglasses on and the MIT baseball cap pulled low. So when Kara hops down the steps below ground at a different subway station than the day before, Lena isn’t far behind her. Lena even planned ahead and bought a metro card, she’s practically a regular civilian now. So keeping a few paces back and ducking onto the subway car at the opposite end of Kara is easy enough.

They’re headed uptown, and Lena knows from her earlier studies that the green line is the quickest route from Kara’s apartment to CatCo. The notion that this might finally be the day the misfitted blocks come together is both exhilarating and terrifying.

In fact, Lena’s actually sweating when Kara pushes off from the car wall and exits the train at the station closest to the media company, because this is it and she doesn’t know what it’s going to confirm to see Kara enter Catco but she knows it’s conclusive of something messy and unsavory. It doesn’t help matters that Kara’s all dressed up in her nicest black slacks and a checkered button up which Lena knows she only keeps in her closet for job interviews. Lena jogs up the station stairs after her and watches Kara head east,  _ again _ where the company is, and Lena can taste the bitter dread salivating under her tongue, wants to gag on it.

But two blocks away from CatCo, Kara stops, and steps inside a cafe. Lena lingers across the street, shuffles and leans against a phone booth, and she can just make Kara out through the shop front window as she waits in line. It’s only a few minutes later that the bartender comes back out with a brown paper bag in hand and a tray of four coffees, and Lena’s stomach churns.

Because the whole ‘getting coffee for the office’ thing is definitely a reporter thing, Lena knows, she’s seen the movies. Isn’t it? 

Except when Kara comes out onto the street, she turns around and heads back in the direction of the subway.

Lena’s half tempted to run after her screaming that she’s going the wrong way.

It’s not until after they’re back on the train, after Kara’s exited two stops back in the direction of her apartment, and once again remerging into the city that Lena realizes where she’s headed towards, recognizes where they are.

Spheerical Industries. 

Kara’s walking in the direction of where she works. With coffees. Lena remembers actually that Kara had texted her a few days before, asking about her schedule, and Lena said something about twelve hour days at the lab all week, to buy herself time in order to avoid Kara as much as possible.

But Lena’s not actually there, because she’s here. Following Kara.

Oh for fuck’s  _ sake _ .

Lena scrambles and ducks around the corner of the next street. From where they are now, they’re about four blocks away in a straight shot to the front entrance of SI. If she runs a roundabout path, she just  _ might _ manage to not get into Kara’s path and actually get there first. 

Lena doesn’t even take a moment to consider how utterly ridiculous she’s made her life to be these last few days, she just bolts it down the next side-street. Both from jittery panic and the run, Lena’s really sweating now by the time she makes it into the lobby, and she’s fanning herself as she rushes past the security guard and up to the lobby receptionist.

“Eve, hey, how’re you going?” Lena forces out with her strongest attempt at easygoing pose, pulling off her sunglasses as she tries to conceal how she’s sucking in sharp lungfuls of air through her nose. 

“Good afternoon, Miss Luthor. Oh, dear, you do look terrible.” Eve grimaces as she takes in Lenas sweaty hair, her surely pale complexion.

Wiping off a thin sheet of sweat from her forehead, and pulling at the collar of her sweater to alleviate the heat, Lena glances down at herself, her skinny jeans, an old white t-shirt under Kara’s zip up hoodie.

Because, of  _ course _ she’s still wearing this outrageous sweater despite everything.

Right, no, she is positively not dressed to be at the workplace. “Yes. Thank you.” Lena yanks off her baseball cap, hastily combs through her matted hair and glances over her shoulder anxiously. “But um, just Lena is fine. Listen, someone is about to come in looking for me, I think.” 

Eve’s immediately frowning with concern. “Do you want me to say you’re not here? Should I call security?”

“No!” Lena lowers her voice, laughs nervously. Fuck, what does she do? “No, God, nothing like that. It’s just, um, a friend. Listen, I’m gonna go on up, just call me when she’s here. I’ll be in Sam’s office.”

Eve doesn’t look like she gets it. “Miss Arias is not going to be impressed that you’re here, you know. You should be at home resting.”

“Yes, I know, but—”

“You work much too hard, Lena. I heard about everything you did, too, you deserve a break.”

Lena’s foot is tapping now as she impatiently looks back at the front entrance doors, the ones Kara will be striding through any second now. “Okay! Yes, I’m only picking up a few things. Just, please call me when she’s here? Sam’s office. And don’t tell her I know she’s coming.”

Eve nods curtly. “Yes, I will happily do my job for you.”

She calls a quick thanks over her shoulder as she rushes up to the elevators, taps repetitively at the call button, looking back at the entrance once, before the doors slide open. The dragging of floors up the elevator shaft is painfully, agonizingly slow, practically inching. She makes it to the forty-second floor, and she’s a frantic ball of hysteria by the time she bursts into Sam’s office, slamming the door behind her.

Sam jumps in her seat. “Lena! What are you doing here? I thought—”

“I will explain  _ everything _ to you in five minutes if you just back me up and help me get rid of her.” 

Sam stares back at Lena, bewildered, like the woman who’s just entered her office is a complete stranger. “Tell who—?” 

Before Sam can respond, her office phone rings, and then Eve’s voice is coming through to alert them that a Kara Danvers is at the front desk.

“Oh my God.” Sam’s jaw drops comically. “What is she doing here?”

“I don’t know.” Lena quickly grabs a random stack of papers off Sam’s desk and waves her out of the office.

“Wait,  _ how _ does she know you work here?”

Lena stifles a reaction, the immediate sharp, stinging response that Kara has likely known all this time because—

She doesn’t have all the facts yet. She’s working on it. It’s not like Lena doesn’t trust Sam, rather it’s completely the opposite. It’s just that, the second she drops forward her cards, everything is going to change and Lena won’t be able to take that back. 

No, Lena needs to handle this on her own.

“I don’t know,” is all Lena says, stiff and dizzy with dread.

To be fair, for anyone watching the news or following her family it is now public knowledge that she works at SI, for anyone that so much as knows her name even. Because apparently it  _ was _ wishful thinking on Lena’s part to imagine there might be somebody out there who doesn’t know who she is, doesn’t care where she comes from, has no ulterior agenda for introducing themselves to Lena.

In the elevator, Sam’s questions only grow while Lena’s resolve thins.

“How did you know she was going to be here? Why are you here in the first place? You look like hell, Luthor. And why did you grab my Victoria’s Secret invoice?”

Lena glances down at the papers in her hands, the ones she grabbed on a whim to appear as if she came here for an actual fucking reason, and she shakes them incredulously at her friend. “Why did you spend four-hundred dollars at Victoria’s Secret?” 

“That is so not the most confusing thing going on right now.”

Lena’s head falls back against the wall. “I’ve been dodging her calls.”

Sam smacks her on the shoulder. “Why? That girl is a fucking angel, stop sabotaging your happiness.”

Lena swats her hands away. “Quit it, I know, it’s just—” Lena swallows, desperate to shove off the sudden sting behind her eyes. “I just, I’m trying to be careful, is all.”

“Fuck careful.” The elevator stops, the doors open, and Lena follows Sam out into the lobby. “You deserve to be happy Lena.”

“I know that,” Lena hisses. “But still, can you please—”

“...and so I wasn’t sure what kind you’d like, but I mean, coffee’s coffee right?” Kara’s at the front desk with Eve, who’s smiling with her manicured hands wrapped around a maroon coffee cup identical to the remaining three on Kara’s tray.

“You’re a lifesaver, thank you,” Eve gushes, and Lena wonders if she looked just as moonstruck the first night Kara made her a drink.

Lena approaches the desk apprehensively, and when Kara’s eyes flit up to meet hers finally, the brittle resilience of Lena’s sanity crumbles into fragments.

It’s different, seeing her straight on like this. 

It’s been weeks now, God knows how long, since Lena last saw her, since that night at Kara’s apartment when Sam called. Following her around the city from a safe distance is nothing compared to Kara being a few feet away, to seeing the splash of freckles under the rim of her glasses, to make out the gleam of her teeth when her mouth splits into a smile. 

For just a moment, just a second, Lena wishes she didn’t know. If she didn’t know, she could fully immerse herself into the giddy glee of Kara visiting her at work, of realizing that Kara’s so dressed up like this for her.

If this was before, Lena would be swooning, she’d be melting, she’d be falling.

Now Lena just stares at Kara, lost.

“So they’re not keeping you in chains here.” Kara hums, her smile all soft edges and sweet like honey.

Beside Lena, Sam scoffs. “Please, you know I have to kick her out of here most nights.”

Kara laughs as she plucks a small drink from the tray and holds it out to Lena. “Good, I was getting worried. Here, almond cortado, right?”

Turning to Sam, Kara adds, “Here, I got you one too. Red-eye, splash of milk I think?” The last and final coffee on the tray, aside from Kara’s own, is handed to Sam, and Lena’s stomach churns. She’s pretty sure she’s never actually even told Kara Sam’s order, she probably just ordered for her once while standing next to Kara, one of their brief mornings together when she actually managed to get Kara to wake up and walk with her to the nearest cafe before work. Kara would be bleary-eyed and half asleep, rubbing at her cheek sleepily as she complained the whole time that Lena’s dragged her out of bed.

It seems almost decietful, that a person can tick off so many boxes, seem so perfect and endearing, when in reality they’re just a fucking liar.

It makes Lena feel cold, makes her feel like she’s overheating, makes her numb.

Sam has the same starstruck gratitude as Eve when she takes her coffee, and Lena wonders if there’s anyone who isn’t just a little bit in love with Kara. 

Anyone except Lena, who’s trying to keep both halves of her heart forcefully apart lest they merge back together and she convinces herself that maybe trusting Kara wouldn’t be such a bad idea, there’s still a chance for this all to be a misunderstanding. Because she can’t, oh God she can’t, she doesn’t know if she can bring her hopes back up again like this. Fool me once, right?

Kara’s eyes fall back onto Lena, soft, sunny, serene. “Hey.”

Lena swallows. “Hi.”

“I won’t keep you,” Kara assures shyly, rubbing at the back of her neck. “Just wanted to, uh. See you. Oh, this is for you guys too.” She holds out the brown paper bag.

“Ooh, I’ll take that.” Sam smiles mischeviously as she snatches the bag, peaks inside. “Holy shit, are these cinnamon rolls?”

Kara smiles, laughs. “Oh yeah, only the best from Noonan’s. They’re my favorite in the city.”

“Yeah so, Lena was actually just leaving!” Sam excitedly announces around a bite of the dessert, and Lena’s blanches. “She’s been out sick, actually, just came in to help me with something for a quick sec.”

“Oh gosh, are you really? You should’ve called, I would’ve brought you something else.” The pinch of her nose, the downturn of her frown, the high, empathetic octave to her voice, it makes Lena light-headed. 

Lena wants to sink into her, see if she smells the same. It makes Lena’s throat bob to force herself to remember that the person standing in front of her is a total stranger when everything about her looks so familiar, screams authenticity and sweetness. She has to actively push to the forefront of her mind the fact that Kara isn’t who she says she is, that she has secrets, that her sunshine face is all a facade and Lena’s being played.

“But that’s all done now,” Sam continues with a cheeky smile. “So. Off you go, Lena.” She elbows Lena towards Kara. “You don’t mind making sure she gets home alright, do you Kara?”

Lena blinks between the two, panic thudding in her chest, and she waves a hand feebly. “That’s, that’s fine actually, I don’t—”

“Of course.” Kara gives Sam a firm nod. “I’d be happy to.”

“Perfect.” Sam beams at the pair of them and glances back at Eve, who watches the trio of them with oblivious interest, sipping at her coffee. “I’ll see you Monday then, Lena.”

If looks could fucking kill.

“Feel better.” Eve waves cheerfully as Kara’s arm loops through Lena’s elbow and she’s guided to the front door.

“Call me later!” Sam calls.

“Um—?”

The doors close behind them after Kara waves her goodbye, and Lena’s alone with her.

Lena thinks this must be a nightmare, surely this didn’t all go so wrong, she did not dig herself into this astronomical mess and she surely is not finding herself here right now. With Kara. Outside.

“I’m guessing you’re not up for the subway?” Kara asks as they exit under the building archway and make onto the street. Lena can feel the hum of her low voice in Kara’s arm, the one tangled with her own, and she realizes how close the bartender is. They’re pressed side to side, Lena can confirm that Kara hasn’t changed her bodywash since she saw her last, and she’s so incredibly fucking warm it makes Lena’s breath catch.

Lena wants to lean into her comfort just as much as she wants to hide somewhere and cry.

She pulls herself loose from Kara’s arm, takes a staggering step back. “It’s fine, I don’t need an escort.”

The look Kara levels her with is playful, like she can’t see Lena’s tortured reluctance. “Maybe not, but I wouldn’t put it past you to turn around and go straight back to work.”

“Really, I won’t, I’ll go home.”

Kara’s eyebrows twitch, and she looks Lena over. “Okay. Humor me, then? I’ve missed you.”

Not even Lena’s own family, professional experts in lying and deceit, could put so much conviction in such a soft admission. It makes Lena want to scream, because she’s nauseous and there’s a headache pressing into her eye sockets and she doesn’t want to say it, she shouldn’t, but.

“I miss you too,” she whispers.

Miss, not missed, because that Kara is gone, because Lena can’t go back to the Lena that didn’t know.

Kara smiles, cocks her head. “So. Can I take you home?”

Lena’s not the fool her brother considers her to be, she’s not stupid. She swore she moved to this god forsaken city to make a name for herself untainted by monetary prestige and scientific dishonor, she came here to prove she’s capable of something more for herself than being a trophy wife. She can contribute to something worthwhile, be the kind of person who’s proud of themselves.

Lena swears she’s not a fool, but.

“Yeah,” Lena sighs. “Take me home.”

Lena calls them a Lyft, waits patiently on the curb, Kara standing tall and firm beside her, their sides skimming. 

Lena knows Kara can tell something is up now, surely she’s not that oblivious. Lena can see from her peripheral how the blonde sneaks small looks down at Lena as they wait with only the noise of cars and the hustle of the city to fill in the gaps. She’s not sure how to even look at Kara, much less talk to her, but at the very least she knows she has to keep an eye on her.

If there is an angle to all of this, if Kara can’t be trusted and this was all an elaborate scheme to begin with, Lena has to know. She can’t just keep hiding, run off to her apartment, ghost Kara like a bad one night stand, because then she’ll never know.

She’ll never know if she was too quick to jump the gun, if it was all just a coincidence, if maybe Kara has never actually even seen a picture of Lena’s face and she still has no idea she’s talking to the sister of the man responsible for the death of her cousin, or if maybe she did know all along but there was no secondary agenda on the table.

There’s like, one too many threads to their connection for Lena to keep track of, it makes her temples throb.

She has to admit, though, she is curious. She wants to know how Kara rationalizes not telling Lena what she knows, if she even cares enough to justify herself at all.

“How did you know where I work?” Lena asks in the car.

Does Kara actually tense beside her, or is Lena reading too much into the way she shifts in the seat? 

“Uh, Winn mentioned it the other day. Said you were bragging to him about some new 3D printer you guys got last month.”

“Okay, I was not bragging.” Lena crosses her arms, and then stops. She does remember that conversation with Winn, after maybe a drink or two at Roulette on a Thursday night. 

Kara laughs, turns so that she’s more angled towards Lena and props an arm behind her head. “Sure, ‘course not.”

Lena tries a different approach. “How were you planning on finding me once you got there? It’s a massive building.”

Kara, if anything, just looks amused by Lena’s line of questioning. “Your receptionist asked if I was a friend of yours, and I said yeah. Didn’t take much.”

Right, that would be Lena’s fault.

Lena looks back up at Kara helplessly, her kind eyes, the way she looks so nonchalantly happy to just be sitting with Lena in the back of this car, as if nothing else in the world exists or even matters.

There’s a part of her, a small, childish spark buried under layers of pessimism, that wants to point out that even though Kara probably does know who Lena is, she still looks at her like… like  _ that.  _ Everything Lena was so afraid of, all the reasons she held back in telling Kara who she was, they’re insignificant, because it seems that Kara does know, and she still looks at Lena like she put the moon in the sky.

“You okay?” Kara says quietly, and Lena realizes she’s just staring at Kara like she’s on the verge of a breakdown.

Which, she is. But that’s beside the point.

“Yeah.” Lena forces a smile. “Just…”

“Sick?”

Lena nods dumbly.

Kara hums and stretches out her arm to wrap around Lena’s shoulders, pulls her close against her and rubs up and down Lena’s side for warmth. Lena’s not pathetic if she sinks into it, is she? She just, she needs to keep close tabs on Kara, and it’d be weird if she jerked away, Kara would really suspect something is up.

The internet found nothing except confirmation that Kara wrote the article, didn’t actually give anything valuable to whether or not Kara is still working as a reporter, or hell if she even ever plans to. And then following her around found nothing, and yeah, okay fuck it, Lena’s hoping maybe this will all turn out to be nothing. But if she’s going to find that out? She has to figure it out from Kara, hear it from her mouth, get an explanation out of her that Lena can pick apart and inspect like a specimen in the lab. Only then can she really determine what to do here.

Lena curls into Kara’s side, tucks her face into the broad, soft shoulder, closes her eyes.

It’s about keeping your enemies closer, or something.

xx

“Hey Lena?”

“Hm?”

“So like… um…”

Lena pauses from where she’s pouring water into the kettle, turns to her open bedroom door where Kara’s voice comes from. “What?”

Kara reemerges with disheveled hair, her glasses crooked. “How the hell do you ever get yourself out of bed in the morning with a mattress like that?”

Lena blinks. Kara clearly does not have the same reservations about bedrooms that Lena did the first time she went to Kara’s. “Is this a trick question? I usually wake up at six.”

Kara pouts, drags her feet as she sulks back into the kitchen and hops onto the counter beside the stove. “Listen, I need you to explain why we’ve been hanging out at my dump of an apartment this whole time when you live in a literal palace.”

Lena peeks around them, takes in her kitchen. It’s only two-hundred square feet. That’s normal, right? “I thought I was being fairly modest when I picked this out. And your apartment isn’t a dump. It’s cozy.”

“That’s rich people talk for small.”

Lena rolls her eyes, pulls a white ceramic mug from a cabinet. “You’re being dramatic. Your place is lovely, and my place is not that nice.”

“Lena, your bed alone costs more than twice my rent.”

“Okay, you’re clearly exaggerating, or you’d be living in a cardboard box.”

Kara gives Lena a baffled expression as she’s handed her tea. “Eighteen hundred, Lena. My apartment is eighteen hundred. Do I even want to know how much you pay for yours? Am I allowed to ask that?”

Lena purses her lips, leaning her hip against the counter. “About five, I think.”

Kara, mid-blow on the hot beverage, pauses. “Please say hundred.”

“Kara, look me in the eye and tell me this looks like a five hundred dollar apartment to you.”

Lena expected it to be harder to pretend around Kara, pretend that she doesn’t know about the article and act as if it’s not eating away at her that this entire friendship was probably based on a lie. But the moment she laid her head on Kara’s shoulder in the car and closed her eyes, let go of the restraints it was… simple. 

She’s playing for the long game now, not succumbing to her inner turmoil. She just has to keep Kara thinking everything is okay, to buy Lena some time until she can figure out how to get Kara to tell her the truth herself. 

Lena doesn’t expect an easy answer to this one, though. The most economical route would be Kara just manning up and deciding Lena deserves to know everything, and this would be the ideal result. Lena can pretend she didn’t know all along, for a little bit anyway, and let Kara do the work for her in scrounging up a reasonable explanation for all of this. The simplest choice for Lena would probably be to just tell Kara like,  _ hey by the way, I’m Lena Luthor, thought you should know. _ This would give Kara a nudge in the right direction, really put her on the stand and see if she has what it takes to blatantly lie to Lena’s face.

Because if Lena thinks about it, technically, Kara hasn’t lied to her. At least, not in any way that Lena hasn’t already lied to Kara herself. It’s all the same thing anyway, both lies of omission, right?

She did say she hadn’t gotten the journalism thing off the ground, or something to that affect. What was her exact wording? Lena can barely remember what she ate this morning in the car, much less a side tidbit about her studies at a diner over a month ago.

Speaking of, Lena really needs to get that car rental back. 

Lena never claimed to be somebody else, and Kara never claimed to not know who Lena is. Mind you, Kara was one step ahead of Lena and let Lena think she had the upper hand but, still. Lena’s finding it harder and harder to hold against this woman the simple desire of not wanting to be misunderstood for something with her name on it.

Or things with her family’s name, in Lena’s case.

So. If she wants to push things forward, she just has to tell Kara who she is. Which should be easy in theory. Kara already knows, it’s not a big deal anymore, a massive reveal. She’s just gonna tell her.

They’re sitting on Lena’s stiff green sofa while Kara talks animatedly about something Lucy did last weekend involving some pool noodles and a screwdriver, about an hour later, when Lena decides. She’ll just ask her, just rip off the bandaid.

“Kara, I need to tell you something.”

She’s got this, really, she can do this. She’s a Luthor, she cured an emergent disease in under three weeks, she’s got an IQ of 172. 

Kara hums, pushes her hair from her face and adjusts her glasses. “What’s up?”

Lena thinks she might be the cutest human being she’s ever fucking seen. 

She blinks. 

She’s  _ got _ this.

“I haven’t eaten in two days,” Lena blurts out instead.

“You  _ what?” _

xx

Yeah so Lena doesn’t tell her. But she will. Later. Tomorrow, maybe. She can’t very well drop a bomb like that on Kara when the woman is stuffing her face with fried pierogi and now they’ve got a nature documentary on.

There’s also this horribly bleak, nauseating feeling in her stomach that this is all just the beginning of the end, and as soon as she addresses this out loud, she’ll know which way things are going to swing, where the dice will fall.

Lena’s not sure if she’s ready for that just yet.

She sifts through her borscht, not all that hungry despite the truth that she really hasn’t eaten in two days aside from fruit bars and coffee. Forty-eight hour stakeouts really don’t leave a lot of room for nourishment, and God knows she wasn’t getting much of anything in her system in the weeks leading up to visiting Lex.

Kara’s not having it though, because she cuts up a slice of her food and holds it out for Lena. When she waves her off, Kara just makes a persistent noise and Lena relents, swallows it down, begrudgingly admits to Kara that it’s good, fine.

Lena expects Kara to leave after the food is finished, eventually finishing up her soup even if it takes her most of the movie to do so. But even once the film is over, and Kara shushes Lena as she scoops up the trash from their takeout and cleans up, she fully anticipates Kara to scratch her head and tell Lena bye, give her a  _ see you later _ with those stupid finger guns she’s always doing, or something.

But Kara just hops back onto the sofa and curls her feet underneath herself with a dreamy smile. 

Lena yelps when Kara scooches closer and pulls Lena’s legs onto her lap, and she has to remind herself that they were indeed this close before everything. It’s hard to imagine, it seems like a lifetime ago, because Lena can’t help the sticky, cautious sensitivity as if they’re back to square one, when everything was all timid touches and reserved words.

But no. They’ve literally slept in the same bed before, they’ve held hands, Kara’s laid in her lap, been wrapped up in her arms like they’ve known each other for years. Lena is struggling as if there are two versions of Kara, two iterations that refuse to weld together appropriately in her brain, the one from before and the one now.

“Tell me what’s been up with you,” Kara says, poking at Lena’s knee. “I feel like I’ve been talking your ear off all night.”

Lena exhales, wrings her fingers together over her stomach. “Not much, really.”

Kara leans forward to catch Lena’s eye. “You said you were making headway on a new project last time we talked. How’d that go?”

Lena really can’t decipher what angle Kara’s playing at, what the point is of asking these sorts of questions when surely she must already know all about what Lena’s been up to, the disease and the cure. 

“It worked out, yes, that’s all finished now. I flew out to Metropolis, actually.”

There’s a twitch of — something, around Kara’s mouth. “Oh yeah? For work?”

“Sort of.” Lena thinks the room is starting to spin, but her eyes are only on Kara. “I was… visiting my brother.”

She’s not making it up now, there’s absolutely a flicker of understanding in Kara’s eyes, but she smothers it quickly, and her voice is low and quiet. “You don’t talk much about your family.”

Lena’s not sure if it’s better that there’s still no blatant lie to call her out on, if it hurts less or more. Kara’s always so careful about what she says to her, Lena wonders if its conscious, deliberate. 

“We’re not close.” Lena’s gaze wanders to the ceiling. “But he’s something of an expert on the focus of my work. I needed his input, nothing more.”

Who is she justifying this for?

“Was it nice to see him, though?” Kara asks. When Lena looks back to Kara’s face, she sees only open curiosity, no judgements or masked contempt. Why can’t this be simpler? Why can’t Kara just hate her? 

“No,” Lena admits wetly. “He’s a real ass, to be honest. But I found out what I needed to know.”

The truth, but no answers, not really.

Kara smiles, runs her hand along Lena’s kee comfortingly. “Were you two ever close?”

“When we were young, I suppose, sure, as close as kids can be. But when I went to boarding school he stopped coming home as much, and then so did I.” Lena shrugs flippantly. “It’s not as heartbreaking as I make it sound.”

“Why do you seem like you’re trying so hard not to miss him?” Kara’s hand reaches out, curls a lock of Lena’s hair around her fingertips, and Lena is swept and dazed by the brush of Kara’s knuckles against her cheek, the stimulation of having her so close. Kara’s inane, pointed questions, the physical contact, the dangerous swirling in her gut.

“He’s changed.” Lena clenches her jaw, struggles to tamp down the sting in her eyes. “I don’t know anything about who he is, I barely recognize him anymore.”

“And you don’t want to? Get to know him now?”

Lena regards Kara cautiously. Is she trying to gauge whether Lena’s a narcissistic maniac like him? If she has any interest in his failed work beyond reparations, if she believes he’s innocent?

But Lena’s tongue is sharp against her teeth. “No. I’m not much interested, and frankly, I deserve better than someone who only cares about how they can use me to achieve their ends.”

Because being bitter and angry is so much easier than giving into the conflict she’s choking on.

Kara doesn’t so much as flinch, just keeps at the same soothing strokes through Lena’s hair, quiet, contemplative, her eyes falling somewhere low. Lena’s hands shake, she thinks she’s really going to be sick this time because why can’t Kara just tell her the fucking  _ truth. _

“It probably doesn’t mean much coming from me, but I’m proud of you.”

Lena’s chest clenches, she doesn’t know how to carry all of this inside her. “What for?”

Kara shrugs, meets Lena’s gaze fluidly. “For knowing your worth. It takes a lot to demand that, and even more to walk away when you’re not getting it.”

Lena wants to ask if this is the part where she’s supposed to walk away from Kara, where she’s strong enough to know she deserves someone who can be honest with her from the get go, someone who hasn’t betrayed her trust. 

But when Lena’s face crumbles, her lower lip bobbing like boiling water that threatens to spill, it’s Kara she crawls into, Kara who she plants her tears into. Lena can only imagine what Kara must think as to why Lena could possibly be crying right now.

As much as it hurts, as conflicted and torn Lena’s will is being stretched taut at both ends, as much as she hates Kara for putting this feeling onto her… it is so liberating just to finally let go.

When arms wrap around her and she’s pulled into the blonde’s lap, and she is truly, fully held, Lena can’t remember if Siobhan ever really touched her like this. If anyone ever touched her like they cared.

And so maybe Lena isn’t entirely certain why this hurts so damn much either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the fact lenas not actually sick, everyone just agrees that she is bc she looks like shit, is such. a. mood.


	9. hanging by a moment here with you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know it's not wednesday, i lied
> 
> hello sunday updates

If Lena thought she deserved an award for smiling at Siobhan’s side and being the ideal, perfect girlfriend whenever in the spotlight, well. 

She might be in line for an Oscar nomination if she keeps this up.

Peacefully reading a manuscript on tumor heterogeneity with her head in Kara’s lap on the couch again two days later, as the blonde scrolls through her phone and absently strokes her fingers through Lena’s hair, you’d never know that Lena’s mentally teetering on the verge of three different catastrophic meltdowns just by looking at her.

First off, there’s the fact that this is the woman who is responsible for putting her brother in prison and getting a dangerous, fatal treatment out of circulation, saving God knows how many lives.

Then there’s the near 100% chance that this same woman has known who Lena is all along, and that she perhaps has in fact had an ulterior motive to befriending Lena, though the likelihood of the latter is yet to be determined.

And finally, Lena’s just oversensitive flaccid goo under those gentle fingers. She feels like she’s both at a luxurious spa getaway and also two tequila shots too deep, still deciding whether she should run to the bathroom and hurl or stay calm and play it cool.

So yeah, the fact that as far as Kara can tell, Lena is just quietly reading the same page of a manuscript over and over again, she deserves a few awards. That would really piss off Siobhan. Although Lillian might actually try and call her for once.

Despite how every morning she’s telling herself that today’s the day she’ll confront Kara, and at least three times for every hour that they spend together, it still doesn’t come. Lena comes close to blurting it out all of four times over the next couple weeks, is on the cusp of letting it pour out of her like a last wailing breath, her heart beating like a church bell slamming against her ear drums. 

Once, is now, here, on Lena’s couch, Sunday morning.

Kara had worked late the night before, but she’d promised to bring Lena back something to eat and check up on how she was feeling after. Lena insisted she’d probably be asleep, that Kara shouldn’t go to such lengths, because for fuck’s sake she’s not even sick, and also Lena’s got some mental calculations to do about how long she can reasonably keep this up, to figure things out. 

But when the bartender texted at five a.m. to ask if she was awake, Lena caved without a second thought. She was more lonely than she was tired, under the covers in her bed in sleeping shorts and one of Kara’s t-shirts. Kara showed up at her door with a bag of leftover soup dumplings, and then Kara started rubbing her eyes tiredly when they were finished eating, and it was rather an easy progression to Kara spending the night. She showed Kara where she keeps the mouthwash, and then it was just a tired, fuzzy-minded decision to take the blonde’s hand and pull her to bed.

They slept together before after Nia’s party, it’s fine, it’s nothing.

Like, in the same bed, the act of sleeping. Not— 

So, yes, Lena was too torn between clinging to her sour, humiliated heartbreak and a childish longing for Kara’s comfort to kick her out the next morning. She couldn’t stomach it, not when she woke around eleven with Kara’s arm draped loosely over her hip, snoring face-down into Lena’s pillows. Lena was weak, and her loneliness just wasn’t something that just anyone else could quench.

She’s still nauseous with conflict, thinks she might pull her own hair out if she doesn’t figure this out soon. But with Kara’s hair splayed across Lena’s sheets and the sleepy way she pulls Lena closer makes her desperate to fight for… whatever this is.

So Lena made them coffee, told Kara she could stay if she wanted but she was going to catch up on work. Although she should’ve had better foresight about being able to process any written material with Kara in the same room, but there’s nothing she can do about that now, so she might as well do a little prodding. 

Because if she can’t force the words out herself, if she’s too much of a coward to face the truth, she’s going to claw herself as close as she can to a picture of something real. 

“Hey Kara?” Lena angles her head back to peer up at the blonde. “I know I asked you this before, but why didn’t you pursue journalism?” 

Maybe Kara will confess she’s already dipped her toes into that world, maybe she’ll explain how she went from grieving a family to a freelance piece on the Luthor name, maybe this thumping in her chest will come to an end and maybe Kara will tell Lena the truth all of her own accord and Lena will finally be able to breathe.

Of course, she’s not at all surprised when she feels Kara tense underneath her, an instinctual defensiveness to keep her secret, but it doesn’t do anything to stop Lena’s stomach from sinking low to the ground. All the obvious signs, the blatant tells, the convenient coincidences — has she really been a fool this whole time?

“I did try.” Kara’s hand stops carding through Lena’s hair. “Right after I graduated, and a few times since then but I never had the right kind of experience they were looking for. When I was in college, I was busy working part time in restaurants, didn’t have time to be doing unpaid internships, and I couldn’t afford my rent on desk job rates.”

“And now?”

Kara shrugs shyly. “Guess I’ve always just been waiting for this magical amount of money saved up so I can get that experience they’re looking for, but. I dunno. With my sister struggling to hold a job for very long, fighting her own demons, I always worried I wouldn’t be able to bail us out if I was working as somebody’s assistant. Could cover my portion of the rent yeah, but not both, not like how I can now while bartending.”

A dark, morbid desperation in Lena wonders if she threw a certain sum of money at Kara, maybe they could bury the journalism thing entirely, runaway somewhere else, pretend none of this ever happened. But this is sticky and sour in her mouth, like something Lillian would do, and she forcefully slams that gate shut.

“What kind of journalism do you want to be doing?” Lena tries.

There’s a pause, and when Kara meets her eyes, she thinks she can see something unspoken in them for a second. Like Kara’s trying to tell her the truth, trying to get Lena to fit the pieces together.

But wishful thinking hasn’t gotten Lena much of anywhere lately. Just leaves her bruised, shivering in the dark.

“My focus in college was on scientific press, it’s what I’m good at, but it was kind of a compromise with Eliza and Jeremiah. They were wonderful and supportive of what I wanted to do, and I don’t think they ever meant to pressure me or Alex in any direction but they were… disappointed, when Alex dropped out of med school. Mostly in themselves, I think they took on a lot of the blame because they felt like they failed her somehow, but honestly that just made Alex feel guiltier, and drove them further apart. I talk to them sometimes, now and then, but… yeah.”

Kara inhales sharply, sucks in her bottom lip. “I dunno. I know they weren’t thrilled when I decided to study journalism, something a little more risky for career opportunities. So scientific journalism seemed like the right way to get their approval, you know? But now, I think I’d like to get into civics. I like working at Roulette and all these people will tell me about their lives, talk about what they think about what’s going on in the world. Even when I don’t agree with them, and I can’t really express any sort of political stance of my own, it’s nice to hear the different perspectives. It’s a lot of exposure to different ideas.” Kara laughs dryly. “Mind you, having a customer base made up exclusively of celebrities and the extreme upper class doesn’t make for the greatest diversity, but that’s why I want to go into civics. I wanna know the other side of things, even if I don’t always agree.”

Lena picks at the hem of her sweater, looks away. “Wouldn’t you rather report on things you care about? Make the change you want to see, all that?”

Stamp out criminal arrogance, weed out whether his sister is the same.

Kara sighs. “Every voice matters, but one voice alone doesn’t make much change. I think it’s when you band a lot together that you see true progress. But how can we get that started when so many people don’t think their opinion matters enough? Or those who don’t even have a platform to be heard. I want to put those people in front of a microphone.”

Lena wishes the longing in her chest was still so simple as an affectionate desire to support Kara in who she is and what she wants to be. Lena’s not sure how to hate someone who just wants to put others’ needs above her own.

The lingering question, the words she’s been straining to push out, _ “is that why you never told me you knew who I am? _” It lodges like a dry pill in the back of Lena’s throat. Did Kara just want to hear Lena’s voice freely, untainted by guilt? Did she just want Lena to be comfortable enough to be herself and give her an opportunity at sharing her side? Lena would kill to hear her say it, but this isn’t the right time, not when Kara’s so open and pure, Lena wouldn’t dare crush her now.

She’ll ask her another time, she reasons as she turns onto her side and burrows into Kara’s side, hiding her face. 

“Can we order something to eat now?” she mumbles.

Kara, already pulling out her phone, laughs. “You’re my favorite. Okay, breakfast or lunch?”

xx

Lena puts away the baseball cap and sunglasses and goes back to work on Monday.

“So, I’m confused.”

Lena sighs, hanging up her lab coat. “I already told you three times, Sam, I have no interest in seeing the sex tape you made with your TA, I don’t care how good the quality is.”

Sam bumps her shoulder against Lena’s as she passes her by. “First of all, for 2008 that video was really _ so _ ahead of its time. Secondly, stop being a bitch. I’m talking about Kara.”

Lena’s stomach plummets. “What, what about Kara?”

“You kidding? I’m talking about Friday. What the hell was that about? You never called me.”

“Well I remember I specifically told someone to help me get rid of her, and instead I was sent home with her.”

“Yeah, so you’d get your head out of your ass. Did it work? Why were you avoiding her in the first place?”

Lena clenches her jaw as she pushes open the door to Sam’s office. “It’s complicated.”

“Everything about you is complicated, this isn’t anything new.”

Lena collapses onto a chair. “I’m not sure where this is going with her, is all. I can’t figure out what she wants.”

Not exactly a lie.

“Well, she’s definitely not straight if that’s what you mean. You know she was practically drooling over your tits at the bar?” Sam shrugs as she rounds about to her desk chair, kicks her feet up. 

That’s the other thing — a twisted, convoluted thing. Before she discovered Kara’s familiarity with her true identity, Lena had _ maybe _ been toying with the prospect of Kara liking her too, in a similar way. She’s not that blind, she’s got every longing gaze and affectionate touch catalogued down to the date by this point. Lena was timid about making any presumptions about Kara’s tenderness, but she hadn’t been completely hopeless in thinking Kara might return her feelings, right? She just didn’t want to jinx it, was still feeling everything out. Sure, she told Sam things were platonic and she justified that this was how things normally went, but she still _ felt _ that it was moving in a more romantic direction.

Now, though? 

Lena doesn’t even know what she thinks.

On the one hand, the bitter, pessimistic side of Lena wants to come to the conclusion that Kara is a liar and everything they’ve shared is all worthless now. It was all a sham, Kara only got close with her to further her career or get an exclusive, whatever. In which case, Kara never had feelings for Lena, she played her like a fucking violin and Lena just unraveled for her.

But Lena’s a scientist. A pragmatist. And there’s quite a bit of evidence pointing in another direction, one where Kara is not soulless or conniving. 

There’s the way Kara’s hands will always find Lena’s hair if they’re within two feet of each other, how she plays mindlessly with Lena’s fingers when she’s talking. There’s the way she’d always text Lena good night even when she’s working late at Roulette because she knows when Lena will usually crawl into bed. There’s the way she stopped Lena at the bowling alley before her turn to crouch down and tie her shoe for her, the cute smile she gave as she hopped back to her feet, and there’s the way Lena nearly kissed her right then and there. There’s the way she introduced Lena to her friends, the way Lena’s heart ached with loneliness before and the way Kara flooded her life with comfort and life like the way the sun comes around in the spring after a long winter.

So Lena’s not quite sure where Kara stands. “Okay, but then why hasn’t she made a move yet?”

“Maybe it’s because you pull shit like last week on a regular basis, try to push away anyone that cares about you?” Sam rolls her eyes.

Lena wants to retort that with, _ “I don’t push you away _,” and she thinks Sam can sense it if the way her eyebrows raise in challenge is any indication. But the truth is that that’s exactly what Lena did, for six years. Maybe it wasn’t out of self-preservation, fear of being loved the way she wants to be but not knowing how, but it still shows Lena’s inexperience with maintaining relationships.

It’s pretty fucking sad, actually, that Siobhan was the longest-running relationship she’s ever had. 

“I mean, I’d be pretty confused too if I was getting a hot and cold treatment,” Sam goes on.

“I’m just trying to be careful.” Lena takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to invest myself head-first into something that was too good to be true all along.”

Sam sighs. “Let yourself be happy, okay? Things aren't always as complicated as they seem. You’ve got a good thing going with her, she’s amazing, and she seems to genuinely care about you. It might just be that simple.”

Could it?

Lena will chew over that notion more later, but for now, she nods, and Sam claps her hands with finality.

“Great, can we talk about me now?”

Lena laughs, leans back in her seat. “Yes, yes, go ahead.”

“So I met someone.” 

Lena grins. “Oh?”

Sam launches into a story about a single dad of one of the kids on Ruby’s soccer team, how they coordinated a team party together and he asked her out for drinks over the weekend. Sam recounts the date with excited fervor, erratic gestures and mannerisms, and Lena laughs along with her. Sam goes on about him, the way he dresses, the cologne he wears, the jokes he makes, and Lena hangs on to every worth with a saccharine smile.

Sam didn’t date anyone seriously in the years they were apart. Caring for Ruby was always a priority above anything else, and they certainly didn’t have enough time during school for anything with more depth than a one night stand. So Lena knows it’s been a while since Sam was excited about someone like this. She wonders, in passing, if this is how she looked when she talked about Kara in the beginning, before everything.

It makes the hopeful, soft spot for Kara just that much more tender.

“There is one red flag, though.” Sam scrunches her mouth guiltily. “I heard from some of the other moms that the reason he and his ex-wife separated was because he cheated.”

Lena cringes. “Right, you had me for a minute there, but no. Absolutely not.”

“Okay, I know, I know, but listen. It could easily just be gossip, or maybe his wife was a wench and it was a loveless, miserable marriage.”

“So? He should have divorced her first. You can’t seriously be blaming the wife.”

“I’m just saying, we don’t know what actually happened.”

Lena shakes her head in disbelief. “You can’t really be considering this, Sam. How could you ever trust him if you know he’s done it before?”

“It’s not like it was me.” Sam waves her hand dismissively. “People make mistakes, and I can’t just hold something against him from before we ever even met. Maybe he’s different now.”

Suddenly Lena stills, and her eyes drop for a moment, contemplative. “So… you think people shouldn’t be judged on their past? That you have to determine who they are, their virtues, on how they behave now?”

“Yeah, absolutely. Who am I to make a verdict on something that I don’t have the full story on?”

Lena goes home that night biting her nails.

xx

The second time Lena is on the cusp of asking Kara, they’re at Roulette. 

Kara swapped shifts with Winn, and so she finishes up early around nine and comes around the bar to sit and have a drink with Lena. 

Kara’s tugging her hair out of its ponytail, mouth full of olives, when Lena blurts it out. 

“Why don’t you ever ask me personal questions?”

Kara, cheeks puffed, finishes chewing slowly. “Uh, what?”

Lena’s turned in her seat to face Kara head-on, fully prepared to draw out all the answers she needs from this conversation even if it kills her. It’s time, this has gone on long enough, she can do this.

“You never ask me about personal things,” Lena repeats. “I literally asked you last week if you have a spanking kink, but you don’t so much as ask me where I was born.”

Kara’s blushing, and she sputters. “Look, I still don’t know why you wanted to know that.”

Lena raises an eyebrow. Kara’s cheeks darken further and she ducks her head.

Of course Lena knows one possible if not likely reason why Kara doesn’t ask her private questions, knows it would probably be easier for Kara to get the scoop on Lena if she let her guard down and thought Kara didn’t know.

God, there’s so many perspectives to keep up with.

“Um.” Kara clears her throat. “You just seemed pretty uncomfortable in the beginning when I’d ask you stuff so I figured… I dunno, that I’d wait until you weren’t anymore. I don’t want to assume you’re willing to share stuff about your personal life with me just because we’re friends. Sort of. I mean, sorry, I don’t want to assume that either—”

“Kara.” Lena leans forward, all bravado and determination vanished. She’s never seen the bartender so _ shy _, she normally wears confidence like a thick layer of skin she’s had all her life. To see her tripping up over something so silly as this, it makes Lena’s resolve weaken. “You can say we’re friends.”

Kara’s head perks up with a smile. “Really?”

“You’ve slept in my bed and seen me in my underwear. Yes, I think it’s safe to say we’re friends.”

Lucy, who was placing an orange soda in front of Kara, snorts loudly and the two of them look over. With her lips pressed together bemusedly, containing herself, Lucy waves them off. “Sorry, nothing, carry on.”

Kara throws her straw at the bartender.

Brushing her hair behind her ear, Kara turns back to Lena. “Anyway. I mean, I can ask you stuff if you want. I was just trying to respect your privacy.”

How could Lena possibly hold a grudge against a sweet face like that? 

Kara looks so innocent and open with the way her undivided attention sprinkles over Lena and her needs like early-morning dew, the way her legs dangle off the bar stool and she kicks her feet absently in the air, how their ankles bump together. 

And still, there’s no lie in what Kara tells her, nothing that contradicts how Lena knows Kara knows who she is, nothing incompatible with a story she desperately wants to believe but grievously needs to prove.

Lena exhales, soft, her eyes falling down to Kara’s mouth. 

God, if this was before, she would just kiss her.

“You can ask me anything you want,” Lena says quietly instead, squeezing Kara’s knee.

Kara nods. “Cool. In that case, did you ask me if I have a spanking kink because I seem like a violent person? Or was it because I got really competitive at game night?”

Lucy bursts out laughing behind the bar, and Lena just sighs.

xx

It’s been a week and Kara still hasn’t told Lena that her sister’s back in town. In Lena’s detective rulebook, this is cause for suspicious.

She figures this is the main reason Kara keeps coming over to Lena’s now rather than inviting her over. Lena doesn’t mind, prefers this actually. In scoping out Kara’s true intentions, it feels… safer, to keep it on her own territory where she’s comfortable.

It has nothing to do with the fact that she likes how Kara looks on her furniture, using Lena’s mugs, flicking the light off when she comes out of her bathroom, existing in Lena’s space. No, nothing at all.

But it gets Lena wondering. Kara’s an open book about everything, she’ll tell Lena anything she wants to know, will talk about anything in the world — except for two things: the article and her sister.

The first one, Lena gets it. She’s mulled over that enough by now, it’s a secret, and the motives are still questionable and up for debate, but she knows it’s not meant to be something she herself knows. Off limits. Alright, understood.

But the deal with her sister?

Lena’s less certain about Kara’s reluctance there. She’ll talk about her past with her sister, their upbringing, will offhandedly mention that Alex would like this movie, how she has to tell Alex about this takeout place near Lena’s, so on. But she strays away from mentioning her now, as if there’s a _ before _ and an _ after _ spectrum that Lena’s not seeing. Because it doesn’t seem to be the drinking, Kara will talk about the earlier days when she first realized Alex was struggling, the warning signs, the arguments. There just seems to be a certain _ point _ where, after which, Kara no longer wants to talk about her sister. All Lena can decipher is that now, today, falls into the after.

The first time Lena had asked about Alex, it was also the first time she ever saw Kara’s resolve crack, saw a depth of torment and aching heavy on her back. And Lena understands better than anyone how heavy a siblings’ decisions can feel.

So Lena really doesn’t want to prod at this wound, doesn’t want to peek under the bandage and inspect for her own self gain. It’s merely a hunch that Alex is related to all of this, grounded only on the basis that Kara seems to not want to talk about it. 

It’s selfish, and awful of her, but she has to know if this is something else Kara is keeping from her for a reason.

Lena, finished with her research for the night, sets aside her laptop and props her chin in her palm.

She just rips off the band-aid. 

“So when does your sister get back?” 

Kara blinks at Lena, hands hanging midair over a half-built house of cards on Lena’s kitchen table.

“You said it was a thirty-day program, right?”

The tower collapses, and Kara’s hands drop into her lap. She huffs adorably, and scratches her nose as she mulls overLena’s question. “Um, forty-five. She... actually came back last week.”

Lena watches her face carefully. “Oh. And, how is she?”

“She’s good, yeah, she’s a lot better.” 

Lena sucks in her bottom lip, her heart rate picking up. “Is it nice to have her back?”

A real smile, like a breath of relief, breaks across Kara’s face, and she laughs. “Gosh, yeah, you have no idea. It’s amazing, I really missed her. She’s already back to bossing me around to clean my room, though.”

Lena laughs softly. “Your room is a mess to be fair.”

“Listen. It’s been worse.”

Kara’s smile flattens out as she goes back to building her tower, humming, and Lena watches her. 

She’s even more lost now than she was before this conversation started. 

After reestablishing the first row of cards, Kara asks, “Do you want to meet her?”

Lena’s eyes lift, and Kara’s looking at her with a small smirk, a quirked eyebrow. Lena opens her mouth to answer, but it hangs parted for a few moments of silence, because, _ oh, _ what does she say to that?

“Me?”

Kara’s smirk stretches into a grin, and gone are the blonde’s reserved uncertainties. “Yeah, you, you goof. You two’d hit it off, to be honest. She’s really into fancy whiskey and being mean to me. Although maybe don’t bond over the whiskeys.”

“Right… noted.”

Focused on balancing two cards together, Kara doesn’t look at Lena when she asks, “Do you have plans for Christmas?”

Lena blinks. “Christmas? No, God, I haven’t planned that far out.”

“It’s this next week, Lee.”

“What? No it’s not.”

Lena’s not sure when the month even turned over to December, much less how the year is almost over at this point. It’s been over a month since Sam’s phone call about Lex’s treatment, and, God, Lena doesn’t even know how to process that. She’s been so torn up and twisted in figuring out Kara’s motives that the earth’s spinning axis just slipped right out from under her.

With a wry smile, Kara shakes her head. “Yeah, it is. So, you going anywhere?”

Lena barely refrains from laughing, because Jesus where would she go? Metropolis? Where her mother is likely telling everyone she only has one child, where Siobhan is flaunting her beautiful blonde girlfriend all over the press, where her brother is rotting in a prison cell and fantasizing about how he got under her skin _ again? _

“I haven’t decided.” Lena presses her lips together tightly.

“Well, if you wanna take it under consideration, you should come to mine. You can meet Alex, I’ll make you a stocking, y’know. It’d be fun.”

Lena doesn’t know what to do with the overwhelming impact of adoration she feels for this woman sitting across from her, the all-encompassing warmth of being cared about like this. It makes her breath catch, her lips part, her chest stutter. What else is there to say but yes, yes, _ yes? _

When Kara finishes her house of cards again, and insists Lena take a picture, posing beside it with an eager thumbs-up, Lena thinks she might be out of ideas.

So apparently she hasn’t found that end-all-be-all question, a special button Lena can press to get Kara to tell her herself. Whatever it is that’s holding Kara back, whatever her background is with journalism, maybe Sam was right. Maybe Lena can’t hold against Kara something she did before they even met, something that saved lives and brought closure to her family for her cousin’s death. Lena can keep digging all she wants, her nail beds are raw and her muscles sore from it at this point, but maybe it really is so simple to think Kara just hasn’t told Lena because she didn’t want to pressure Lena into anything. There’s also the nature of how they met, Kara’s in the business of respecting privacy and letting the other person set the pace, the tone. It’s Lena’s own doing that the Luthor name is forbidden between them, Kara just followed along.

Lena doesn’t know where this leaves her, what this aftertaste is called.

Maybe twenty minutes later, it’s crunching on midnight and Kara sighs, says she should probably get going, let Lena get some sleep. 

Yes, she’s lost, and yes, the world is a terrifying place in the dark, not a lot of corners where the light can reach. So what if she drinks in the sunlight?

Lena tugs Kara by the hand towards her bedroom. “No. Put on some sweatpants, we’re watching Babadook.”

Kara whines. “Lee, I told you, I hate scary movies.”

“I know, that’s why you’re sleeping here. I’ll spoon you.”

She’ll just figure out how to just ask her about the article tomorrow.

Before tomorrow comes, though, once the movie has ended and Lena is sleepily wrapped around Kara, on her last dregs of consciousness, the blonde turns around in her arms to face the ceiling.

“Lee?”

Lena doesn’t open her eyes, mumbles in response.

She feels a hand poke at her cheek.

“Mm. Fuck off.”

“Can I ask one of my questions now?”

“No.”

“But you said I could ask you anything.”

Lena groans, a low growl in her throat, but she manages to push an eyelid open. “What?”

Kara’s got a small smile on her lips, Lena can make it out from the moonlight settling in the dark, but Lena can tell from the way her hands fidget under the blanket that she’s nervous.

“What is it?” she asks, softer this time.

Kara swallows. “Why do you like me?”

Lena wants to laugh, because what isn’t there to like? But when she looks between Kara’s pale eyes that gleam through the dark, the serene wavering in them, she sighs. She doesn’t know why Kara’s asking, why she wants to know, and maybe this is relevant data Lena should factor into her investigation, but she’ll deal with that in the morning.

For now, Lena just closes her eyes, rests her head on Kara’s shoulder. “You make me laugh.” 

“But you said yourself that most of my jokes are from the internet.”

Lena snorts. “No, those don’t count. But just, you. You’re sweet, and you make me laugh when you’re just being the dork you are.”

“Lena, I’m not a dork.”

“Mhm. Sure you’re not.”

Kara takes a deep breath. “What else?”

“You’re nice to look at, I suppose.”

_ “Lena.” _ Kara pokes her side and Lena stifles a giggle into Kara’s shoulder.

“Alright, sorry.” Lena brushes her hand along Kara’s hip under the covers, shifts tiredly, the cogs of her sleep-crusted brain struggling to piece together the mosaic that is Lena’s adoration for Kara. “I like… that you look out for the people in your life. Not just me but — your friends, your sister, your neighbors, the… the public at large. You’re always looking for a way to make everyone happy, comfortable” 

Lena’s eyes are open now and she’s staring into the darkness at her hand on Kara’s chest, thinking back over the last couple months, wondering when it was that she stopped looking down. 

“I like that you make me feel safe even if I’m scared to death,” she finishes quietly.

Even if Kara is about to break her heart.

Kara doesn't respond at first, and Lena lets herself drift, finally.

And then, “Can I tell you what I like about you now?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

The last thing Lena registers before falling asleep is the way Kara’s arm snakes around her and squeezes her close.

xx

Christmas isn’t for another five days, but Lena still isn’t left with much time to get presents in order, and Kara gives her very little to work with for her sister.

_ “I dunno, she likes Alex things,” _Kara says over the phone.

“That means nothing to me, Kara.”

_“Listen, don’t get her anything. Just be you. Everybody likes you. Especially me, and my opinion is the only one that matters anyway.” _

Lena scoffs, because she knows for a fact that Kara’s aware she isn’t anywhere near universally liked. Half the country still hates her guts. A little wit on her side is not likely to change that.

“If she hates me then it’s your fault.”

_ “Does that mean that if she loves you, I get the credit for that too?” _

Lena hangs up on her.

xx

Lena stands outside Kara’s apartment on Christmas Eve with two large paper shopping bags in hand, practically cutting of the circulation in her fingers. But when she goes to adjust the collar of her loose flannel, she notices her hands aren’t shaking, that her breath comes even, and it doesn’t take much of a pep talk to get her knocking this time.

The door opens to reveal Kara in a red and green dinosaur Christmas sweater.

“Hi.” A breathless smile breaks across the blonde’s face. 

Lena’s returning smile feels genuine for the first time in weeks. “Hi.”

After quickly setting her bags down by the door, Lena leans in to press a brief kiss to Kara’s cheek, and Kara’s arm wraps around her lower back. But with her hand sweeping across Kara’s jawline, Lena notices a tremor in her neck, the taut tension in her shoulders.

“Are you okay?” she asks quietly, pulling back to meet her eye.

Kara nods quickly, forcefully. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She clears her throat, shuts the door behind Lena and rubs at her nose, waving to the other person in the apartment. “Uh, so. This is Alex.”

It takes Lena a conscious reminder to not say something utterly foolish like _ I know, _ because she’s seen Alex before, when she first got back from rehab and Kara led her out of the cab. But it’s probably not a good first impression to mention that she stalked her sister for a few days, wouldn’t look great.

Alex, in dark jeans and a plain black crew neck sweater, stands leaning against the kitchen island next to Pork Belly with an unreadable expression, scratching behind the cat’s ears. The cat’s festive, at least, with a red ribbon and a gold bell tied around his collar.

Lena can’t help but feel like she walked in on a tense moment, weighs the cons of asking if she should come back later, but then Alex is pushing from the island and offers her a soft smile, holds out her hand.

“Hey. It’s nice to meet you, Lena.”

Lena pours as much authenticity into her voice as she shakes Alex’s hand. “You too, finally. Kara’s told me so much about you.” Lena smiles back, hoping her strain for cool composure isn’t obvious. 

Glancing between the two women, Lena wonders if this actually as incredibly awkward as it seems or if she’s imagining it. 

“Well, this is for you.” Lena turns back to one of the bags she brought with her and digs out a smaller gift bag, extends it out to Alex. 

“Oh. Shit, thank you, you didn’t have to get me anything. Thanks, that’s… actually really sweet of you.” Alex fishes around in the gift bag and pulls out a pale blue candle, turns it over in her hands.

“I tried to ask Kara what you like, but the only thing she could come up with was herself, so.” Lena shoots Kara a scolding glare and Alex laughs. “I hope this is alright. It’s one of those candles meant to smell like your home state, and Kara mentioned you both grew up in Midvale.”

Alex smirks at her sister and nods, chuckling. “Yeah, sounds about right. Definitely don’t trust her with anything important.”

“Hey. I can be helpful.” Kara pouts, of course, and Lena notices how some of the tension coiled in her posture loosens. 

“Sure you can.” Alex snorts, turns back to the kitchen and sets the candle onto the island beside Pork Belly. While she reaches into the fridge, Alex glances back at Lena with a lazy smirk. “So, a little while back, August maybe, I asked her to pick up some eggs on her way home, right? I sent her a couple texts too, you know, she can be pretty forgetful, but she swore she would get them. You know what she comes home with?”

Kara is grumbling nonsense under her breath, something that sounds like, “Why didn’t I get any presents?” as she fishes a bag of caramel popcorn from a cupboard, but Lena pays her no mind, raises an eyebrow, amused. 

“Not eggs, I imagine?”

“She brought me those chocolate-covered marshmallows they sell during Easter, the ones in an egg carton, shaped like eggs? Yeah, she comes home at five a.m. with half a dozen cases. I don’t even know how she found them this time of year.”

Lena bursts with a laugh, scoffing at the blonde beside her who scowls and slumps back into seat.

“The dollar store was the only place open that late, okay? I panicked.” 

Lena turns back to Alex and pulls her from her fond attention on her sister. “You know, she goes through about half a jar of maraschino cherries every time I visit her at Roulette.”

“Just half?”

“Oh she gets into the orange slices too.”

“Are you guys finished?” Kara asks around a mouthful of popcorn. 

They both laugh at Kara’s red, bulging cheeks, and Lena bumps her knee affectionately. Kara gives her a sheepish smile in return and swallows, but when she glances to her sister, Lena notices another rather serious undertaking to it, an indecipherable exchange between the two. 

Lena wonders if this was what it was like for others to watch in on her and Lex when they were kids, when they fabricated their own secret language for encrypted messaging. She doesn’t feel the pang of longing she expects in watching Kara and Alex interact, a loss for what she had as a child. No, she’s not jealous, not even close. Lena’s just happy for her, she thinks. Lena’s fine without it in her life, but there’s a certain relief to knowing Kara will always have her sister.

She feels again as if she’s intruding on a moment between them, a tender silence. But then Alex is laughing, and they’re smiling like nothing’s changed.

“If you guys are just gonna gang up on me all night, I will leave. That’s not a bluff.” 

“Yeah, it is.” Alex flicks a piece of popcorn at her. “But you know I’ll always have your back, no matter what.”

There’s one last, meaningful smile between the two, and then it’s gone, and Alex turns back to Lena with a wry smile.

“So, Lena. How long you think we can put off giving Kara her presents?”

Lena purses her lips. “I reckon we can put it off until next year if we play our cards right.”

They laugh, and Kara buries her face in her arms and groans.

xx

“Lena, how did you even fit all of this in the one bag? I haven’t gotten this many presents on Christmas since the fourth grade.”

“Can’t believe she got you an entire library and I just got a candle.”

Lena at least has the humility to look embarrassed, but she powers through. “To be fair, I did have you in mind when I picked out the espresso machine.”

Both their heads whip around to Lena, and then look around bewilderedly.

“What? Lena. Just, what.”

“Oh, right.” Lena purses her lips. She pulls up a tracking shipment page on her phone and holds it out. “Um. So someone will be by on Friday to assemble it.”

The Danvers sisters both stare at her, and Lena looks back wide-eyed. She peers into the bag at the last remaining present, and bites her lip. “Does this mean I shouldn’t tell you I got you those sneakers you wanted?”

Kara sits cross-legged on the floor surrounded by three teetering piles of books and an abominable amount of tissue paper, and she scrambles for the bag in front of Lena and snatches out the sleek black Nike shoebox. Her jaw drops, and Lena vaguely wonders if this is what Kara’s orgasm face would look like.

“Lena, I seriously cannot accept all of this.”

Alex, on the couch behind Kara, leans over her shoulder and plucks the box from her hands. “I can. You’re a seven and a half, right?”

“Oh don’t you _ dare.” _ When Kara fails to respond quick enough and Alex jerks the box out of her reach, the two quickly fall into a messy brawl, yelping and arguing over the shoes.

Lena is fully endeared watching the way they fight like children, thankful that the earlier tension is completely gone now. She’s convinced now that she just imagined it, she knows the holidays can be stressful for any family, even between sisters as close as these too.

The white, central coffee table has been pushed to the side, and set against where the TV usually is is a short, crudely decorated Christmas tree. It’s not crude in that it’s lacking but more so that it’s rather easier to tell Kara was probably the one to set it up. It’s covered in a mess of variously colored tinsels, lopsided, mismatched ornaments, and rather than a star sitting on top there’s just a cut-out picture of Pork Belly taped to the tip. The winding of rainbow lights strung around it cast a glow like candy over them, and the colorful, warm ambience of Kara’s apartment is starting to feel like sweet comfort again.

Also, yes, Lena is aware she went a little… extravagant on the presents. But there’s an exhaustive, never-ending-scroll of books saved on the notes in Lena’s phone, both ones she’s read over the years and loved and ones she’s been recommended but not yet gotten around to reading. She knows Kara loves reading, perhaps even more than Lena, her room is a scattered mess of wrinkled and folded books. She’s definitely adding fuel to the fire by giving her more when Kara seems to have a problem finishing any she already has, but. Lena struggled to narrow her choice down to just _ one _ book in her cart, and then it just grew into a justified mountain of literature.

Besides, now that she knows Kara knows who she is, there’s less of a desperation to keep secret how much money she has to her name. She can be flashy, flamboyant, spoil her friend. 

It’s not until now, watching Kara red in the face as she beats her sister with a pillow and Alex wheezing with laughter, that she wonders how much the sister knows. Lena can’t imagine Kara wrote such a life-changing, front page story, made a groundbreaking discovery for her family, and that her own sister and roommate wouldn’t know. 

It’s just another thick, breathtaking layer of complexity that makes Lena take a step back. Makes her wonder who else knows who she really is.

What ensues is a light-headed dawning of clarity, a moment where she realizes perhaps the implications of her being here tonight. Not that she isn’t acutely aware of how close her and Kara are, they can be physically affectionate and they’ve met each other’s friends, of course their lives are interconnected, but it’s baffling just the extent to which it goes. Kara has dozens of people in her life, friends she’s known for years, and out of all of them, she chose Lena to come home with her on a private Christmas day with the most important person in her life.

It begins Lena’s inevitable unraveling.

When the sisters settle down, Kara triumphantly reclaims the box and scrambles to put Lena between her and Alex, hiding as she fishes out the shoes and tries them on.

Alex stands and straightens out her twisted sweater and flattens back down her mussed hair, breathing heavily. “Shit, I think I’m getting too old for this. You two clean this up, I’m gonna go shower.” Alex waves around at all the wrapping paper and overturned pillows as she hops around them. “Don’t you dare fucking start the movie without me!”

Once she’s gone, and Kara’s laced up her brand new Jordans, she turns to Lena with a dopey smile that makes Lena dizzy with tenderness.

“Thank you for my presents,” Kara says softly, and Lena knows she’s not imagining it when the blonde’s eyes fall to Lena’s mouth as her own lips break into a grin. 

“You’re welcome. It really wasn’t much, you should see what I got Ruby.”

Kara raises her eyebrows, intrigued. “Do I want to know?”

“Let’s just say the Broadway tickets for Frozen was the smaller one.”

Kara’s laugh is breathless, and she pitches forward, her head falling onto Lena’s shoulder and her arms snaking around her waist. Her touch sends shocks of thrill through Lena, leaves her fingertips tingling, and she turns to welcome to the cuddling blonde more easily, wraps her arms back around her. With only the hiss of flickering candles and the muffled sound of the running shower, there’s nothing but their heartbeats on Kara’s living room floor for minutes.

Lena’s grateful that, for once in her life, when things got scary and everything was in jeopardy, she decided not to run. She decided to stay.

Kara makes a small squeak eventually and disentangles from Lena frantically. “Oh! I completely forgot about your present, jeez, okay, get up.”

“You didn’t have to get me anything, Kara.” But Lena’s already climbing to her feet and following along into Kara’s room nonetheless.

“Don’t even start with me,” Kara warns over her shoulder, crossing around her bed and dropping to the floor to search underneath.

Lena crawls over her unmade bed, scoots across on her elbows and peers over the edge curiously, but all she can make out is Kara’s ass wiggling from underneath the frame, and she smiles. “What is it? Is it your secret vibrator collection that you think I don’t know about?”

She both feels and hears Kara bang her head on the underside of the bed, followed by a loud yelp, and Lena cackles as Kara comes shuffling out from underneath, rubbing sorely at her head.

“You’re not funny,” she mumbles, holding a tattered shoebox under her arm.

Lena sits up on her knees. “If those are the new Adidas, you should know I actually already had them preordered.”

Kara frowns, looks down at the box, back at Lena. “What? No. It’s not shoes. This is just, um, the container.”

“The container?” Lena raises her eyebrows, takes in how Kara shuffles from foot to foot and clenches the box stiffly in her hands, tilts it around her palms.

“Yeah. So, I didn’t get you the stocking, but… well, um, you’re kinda hard to shop for when like, you could just always get the nicer version of something for yourself. And also I’m on a budget this year. But you know, so I was thinking like, about what money _ can’t _ buy, and like…” Kara inhales deeply, finally looking back at Lena’s curious gaze.

Giving up on her supposed explanations, Kara abruptly thrusts the blue box out to Lena.

Lena slides her feet off the edge of the bed to sit normally and gives Kara one last precarious look before she gently lifts the lid.

Inside is just a shuffle of papers, long standard envelopes that don’t quite fit the length of the box but fill it up across. It looks like some typical, old-school filing, and Lena glances up at Kara with furrowed eyebrows. 

Kara points impatiently at the box. “Pick one.”

“One?”

“Yeah, just any one.”

Lena sifts through, runs her fingers along the crisp edges of the clean, white envelopes, and pulls one at random. In Kara’s crude chicken-scratch handwriting, it reads: 

_ Open when you feel happy _.

Lena shakes her head, and once again looks back to Kara. “I don’t get it.”

Kara’s face is red, and she huffs an exasperated sigh as she drops onto the bed beside Lena, gestures to the words. “Well. Are you happy right now?”

She looks at the blonde beside her, this goofy, horribly annoying woman in a Christmas dinosaur sweater with her soft hair twisted in a low tie behind her, her dimpled smile, those expectant, patient eyes. Lena thinks about how much she doesn’t know about her, how much they have to talk about, how far they’ve come but how much further they have to go.

“Yeah, I think I am.”

Kara smirks. “Okay, so open it.”

She does, flicks her finger under the corner tab and swipes it open. Inside is an unmarked card stock and Lena opens it to the written words inside.

_ Dear Lena, _

_ You deserve this. I know happiness can be fleeting, and I know people say that it has to be that way so we can appreciate it when it’s here, but I hope this lasts as long as it can for you. I hope you’re still happy tomorrow, and the week after, and next year. I think if anyone deserves to have it all, it’s you. I hope you keep me around to see it. _

_ So bask in your glow, because I know I am. _

_Always, __  
_ _Kara_

Lena holds onto the letter, lets her eyes roam over the words again, mouthing quietly along. With a knit brow, she drops the letter beside her and begins to skim through the other envelopes. _ Open when you need a hug, open when you need inspiration, open when you’re feeling sassy, open when you’re somewhere beautiful _. They go on and on, there’s at least thirty, maybe even fifty in the shoebox, and Lena’s trembling but it’s not in her hands.

When she looks up at Kara, the soft way the corner of her mouth ticks up, it makes Lena’s heart swell, makes her wonder if the fall was always inevitable.

Kara’s smile is bubbly, everglowing. “Merry Christmas, Lena.”

xx

“All I’m saying is that Kara talks a big game, but there’s very little follow through.” Alex raises her hands defensively. 

“Okay, you are so not any better at pictionary than I am!” Kara, leaning against Lena’s side, scoffs and tosses one of the couch cushions across the living room.

“Watch it.” Alex snatches the pillow from the air. “You always start shit you don’t know how to finish.”

“You wanna bet?” Kara grabs a pillow from the other side of Lena’s lap and holds it warningly, ready to launch.

Lena, however, settles her hand onto Kara’s thigh placatingly, chuckling under her breath, and stands. “And I believe that’s my cue to go, before the two of you start another war.”

Kara forgets about the pillow entirely, her voice dropping. “You’re not staying?”

Lena glances at Alex, who watches them blatantly with an amused expression. Lena finds she doesn’t mind all that much. 

She strokes her thumb under Kara’s chin, smiles. “Not tonight, darling. I’ve intruded enough already. You should spend tomorrow morning with your sister.”

Kara’s hand falls along Lena’s forearm and drops to tangle with her fingers, mindless, comforting. “But you’re not intruding,” the blonde mumbles with a frown. 

“I take up plenty of your time as it is.” Lena smiles again, squeezes Kara’s fingers back. “And also, your room is really fucking cold, so, I’d rather sleep in my own bed anyway.”

Pouting, Kara makes a _ hmph _ sound. “It’s not cold if you’d let me—”

“_ Okay _.” Alex claps her hand, rises to her feet. “Let’s let Lena actually get going, yeah?” 

Lena laughs at the way Kara grumbles, but the bartender releases the hold on her hand and Lena heads for the foyer where she’s hung up her coat. Alex trails along with her, and Lena wonders, foolishly, for a split second, if maybe Kara had been so hesitant in introducing Lena to her sister because she knew that Alex would give the inevitable speech.

Lena doesn’t know much about this speech from personal experience, has never given it nor received it, and it has especially never been given to anyone else on her behalf. Not unless you count the girls from boarding school that Lillian paid off, but that was less of a cautionary speech and more of an active threat she only heard about after the fact.

At least, Lena thinks she’s gonna get the speech because she can see Kara hiding behind the edge of the couch with only her head poking over, intently and curiously watching the two of them.

Alex follows Lena’s gaze behind her and snorts. “You wanna stage a fight to freak her out?” she asks.

“Sure. Should I slap you, or do you want to pull my hair?”

“I can hear you guys, you know,” Kara calls across the apartment.

Other than a small smile they share together, they otherwise ignore her, and Lena shakes her head. Lena offers one last, gentle wave of her hand over Alex’s shoulder to her favorite blonde, and Kara waves back eagerly.

Alex walks along with Lena to the door, dropping her tone so this time they can’t be eavesdropped on. Lena thinks this is it, maybe even hopes for it because it’d indicate something about what’s going on here, but then… the speech never really comes. Not the one Lena’s expecting, not much of one at all.

“I’m glad I got the chance to meet you,” Alex tells her as she holds the door open and laughs dryly. “I know she was nervous about tonight.”

“Yes, well. You’re her whole world, so I don’t blame her.”

“Yeah.” The sides of Alex’s mouth fall into a flatter smile, one that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, looks far off. “But I don’t think it was all that much about me.”

“How do you mean?”

Alex tilts her head with a droll, pointed expression. “I think you know.”

Lena opens her mouth to answer, but Alex is already nodding decisively and inching the door closed. “Have a good night, Lena.”

“You too,” Lena responds on instinct, but then the door closes, and she stays aimless and dumbfounded outside Kara’s entryway for longer than she should. 

It’s not until she gets a notification that her Lyft has arrived that she finally leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so what was kara gonna say before alex interrupted her


	10. i feel my body saying yes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: some forward advances in a very non-platonic way in the scene where lena bursts into the kitchen

Now that Lena’s knows Kara is aware of who she is, and shows no ill will despite her family, Lena finally lets go of most her restraints, no longer holds herself back. There were so many things she was terrified of doing with Kara out of fear of being outed, recognized. But now? 

Kara already knows, and frankly, it would solve 80% of Lena’s problems if someone would just blurt the L-bomb already in front of Kara and they had to face this together. 

Despite Kara not being very forthcoming with how their _ histories _ are connected, Lena trusts her to tell her the truth, should it come to it. If Lena didn’t already know, and she were to have some sort of nervous breakdown about her last name, full of apologies and pleas for Kara to not judge her for her family, Lena can imagine the soft, crooked smile the blonde would put on, the way she’d tilt her head and scrunch her nose. She’d tell Lena she already knew, and cares for Lena all the same, that it never made a difference. Lena was just a girl in a bar and Kara was just the woman who took her hand and pointed to the sky.

It’s not like Lena’s reckless, per se. She’s not about to run out onto the street in broad daylight, waving her arms and calling for someone to recognize her.

The first step was the Christmas presents, but that was hardly a splurge. Kara already knows how much Lena pays for her apartment, and being a customer at a place like Roulette, money was an assumed given. 

But Lena now can now make use of the evenings Kara has off, she can spoil the bartender with extravagant plans and flamboyant restaurants that only someone of a Luthor ranking could pull off and she doesn’t have to give a damn about who might see them.

When Lena stops by Kara’s before their dinner plans after work, two days after Christmas, Kara’s entire living room is overtaken with her wardrobe and the blonde is running back and forth frantically, in and out of her room.

“Oh thank God you’re here.” Alex rushes off the couch and up to Lena. “Please help her, I don’t know even know what she’s trying to accomplish anymore.”

Lena raises her eyebrows, looks over Alex’s shoulder, and sees Kara messing with rainbow-patterned suspenders. “Right. I’ll take over.”

“Thank you. She’s all yours.” The Danvers sister gives Lena’s shoulder a grateful squeeze and hurries off to her room before Lena can change her mind.

Lena drapes her coat over her arm and approaches Kara, smirking. “How are you doing, love?”

Kara spins around from the portrait mirror set in front of the TV and gives Lena an incredulously terrified smile. She hooks her thumbs under her suspenders. “Hi. Do you think these clash with my shoes?”

Lena glances down to her plain, unexceptional, black dress shoes. Lena blinks back up. 

“This is a trick question, right?”

Kara groans exasperatedly and fumbles to hack the suspenders off herself, tosses them on the couch. “Lena, this is serious. I don’t have anything fancy enough for this place, the only blazer I have is from college and is way too small for my shoulders now, and you said yourself my interview shirts make me look like a nerd—”

“A cute nerd.”

“Lena. I can’t do this.”

Lena, laughing, comes up to Kara and splays her hands along Kara’s broad shoulders appeasingly. “Darling, you’re fine. Literally you could wear jeans for all I care, it doesn’t matter. I promise, the richer you are the shittier you get to dress.” Lena chuckles. “You would not believe what my brother used to wear to our father’s board meetings, he thought he was Mark Zuckerberg or something.”

There’s something of a hopeful glint to Kara’s eyes when Lena mentions her family, how the blonde’s gaze jerks to Lena’s. It makes Lena think Kara is perhaps just as eager and desperate for Lena to break the ice between them too, to come clean, to have everything out in the open. For Lena to be ready to share that part of herself. Maybe it’s not now, before a dinner reservation is not the ideal moment for a confession, but that’s okay, and Lena still thinks she can’t wait.

She smiles, pats down Kara’s ruffled hair. “Just wear what makes you comfortable.”

Kara sighs defeatedly, her shoulders slumping. “But you look so_ good _ in that dress, I’ll look like a chump standing next to you.”

Lena smirks. “Adorable, maybe, but not a chump. Come on, just wear that Zara button down I like.”

“The red one I wore to the movies on Tuesday?”

Lena nods and Kara scrunches her mouth together in thought. Lena must give her the right sort of encouraging smile because Kara dashes off to her room a second later, and after some clattering and shuffling, reemerges ready to leave. 

Lena glances at the tornado of Kara’s living room, asks if they need to take care of the clothes strewn about everywhere before they go, but Kara waves a hand flippantly and says Alex can deal with it. Lena’s thinks she can hear Alex shouting something incomprehensible after them as the door closes, but Kara hurries them along.

At the restaurant, an old Middle Eastern place on the water with a wall of windows revealing a beautiful drop of the silky river under the silver moonlight, Kara has the cutest wrinkle in her brow. She’s trying to wrap her head around why the menu doesn’t list prices, and it takes Lena three tries to properly assure Kara that it truly doesn’t matter, to convince her to get whatever she wants. 

Kara fidgets in her seat like she’s making too conscious an effort to sit still, adjusts her glasses and looks around the large room owlishly, craning up at the vaulted ceiling, the gold trims. It’s adorable, of course it is, it’s Kara after all and Lena’s only human. But once the first course comes out and Kara’s too distracted by the way the steaming lamb kofta melts on her tongue and how the flavor sends her eyes rolling to the back of her head, Lena grins.

Now that Kara’s more relaxed, less analytical of herself in this environment, her eyes fall onto Lena’s like snowflakes, and from that point forward it’s all routine. A choreographed dance they know all too well. It’s not all that different from when their ankles bumped beneath a bowling alley table over sticky pizza, just different food, a quieter room. 

Lena isn’t sure of much, most of the conclusions she’s come to lately have been based off speculation, but if Kara keeps looking at her like it never mattered where they were, so long as they’re together, that their paths are side by side, then maybe she doesn’t need the concrete assurance anymore.

“Oh, by the way,” Lena says once their main dishes have been cleared away. “What are you doing the last weekend of January?”

Kara wipes her mouth with the red cloth napkin in her lap, an oddly weary expression on her face. “Um. I’m not sure. Why?”

“There’s this conference in Lausanne that Sam and I were going to go to, on the bridge between scientific research and pursuitive journalism, but something came up, Ruby has a band recital or something like that. I was hoping you might join me instead.”

“Lausanne as in… Switzerland?”

“Is there another one?”

Kara pulls on her tightly buttoned collar. “Oh, wow, uh, I — I don’t know.”

Lena leans forward, drapes her hand over Kara’s. “It’s one weekend, just a couple days, all expenses paid. If you don’t come, then the ticket is just going to go waste.”

Kara’s jaw is clenched, her lips tightly pressed together, but she nods and smiles, timid. 

Lena’s mouth flattens out into a sultry smile. “And it’ll be nice, to get away. Just you and me, a little vacation. Don’t you think?”

Kara’s cheeks are still red by the time dessert comes out, and Lena can’t remember how long it’s been since she’s been this happy.

She wants to find a better word than that, something that doesn’t fall so flat of the immense, boundless light inside of her, the spark that Kara’s ignited. She wants to scour every library shelf, every museum plaque, every written catalogue until she finds a language that might be able to sum up everything it is that she’s feeling, this blind trust, this effortless bliss.

But maybe it can be summed up just like that, without the theatrics, the glamor. Maybe it’s more than enough, more than she ever dreamed of, to be able to say this.

Lena is happy, and that is everything. 

Even if she craves something more.

xx

It’s not until New Year’s Eve that their path begins to unravel, to blossom, that Lena realizes she can’t keep playing this game anymore.

Sam’s hired a babysitter for the night, Kara’s got a gold, glitter-coated pair of 2020 glasses and three pounds worth of sparklers, Alex has queued up the perfect playlist for taking them into the new decade, Lucy has a joint tucked behind her ear, and Lena is completely and wholly ready to say goodbye to this wretched year.

They’re on the rooftop of Kara’s apartment building, the edges rimmed with high-strung yellow lights and colorful streamers. Against the brick wall of the service door are two folding tables a plastic tarp thrown across, an almost obnoxious assortment of drink and snack options laid out. She supposes that’s what you get for hanging around bartenders. Opposite the snack table is the roof ledge that overlooks a brilliant strip of glittering cityscape, and set up all over the roof are various games and activities to keep everyone busy until the ball drops.

James is the only one missing from the usual lineup, as he’s working the bar at Roulette with another one of their coworkers. It’s none of Nia’s college friends or other strangers, just the usual group and a few other of their friends from Roulette, nobody Lena doesn’t already know, and so it’s a sweetly familiar thing for her by now, this group of people she’s gotten to know and familiarize herself with. No more is the hesitant hovering around the entrance, waiting for someone to offer an in, no more shy anxiety or overanalyzing tactics on how to hold a conversation.

Friends. That’s what they are. They’re just a group of friends celebrating a holiday because they enjoy one another’s company, because they can, and that’s breathtaking.

She brought Sam, of course, because the woman hasn’t been out for the turn of midnight since Ruby was born. Lena makes an enterprise out of it, takes Sam out to dinner first and then a line of tequila shots at a bar near Kara’s, gets Sam a bit passed the line of tipsy and bordering on drunk by the time they arrive at the party. 

Yeah, sure, she had a couple too, so she’s a little loose when she finds Kara on the roof in those stupid plastic glasses and some yellow ribbons strung up into her golden hair. Lena immediately rushes into her arms with a squeal, in front of everyone, careless because they all must know by now that this is where she belongs, they’ve seen it enough. She winds her arms around the taller blonde’s neck and jumps into her weight, and Kara lets out a boisterous laugh when she catches her. She staggers back, and Lena only squeezes her harder, but she keeps Lena aloft.

She thinks she might hear Lucy ask, “Why the fuck do none of you greet me like that?” but Lena’s too busy contemplating whether or not to just stay in Kara’s arms all night to pay much attention.

Of course, she disentangles from Kara when it’s necessary. Like when Lucy and Kelly lug up large plastic tub full of water from downstairs, and before Lena can catch up with what’s about to happen, Alex is holding Kara’s hair back and the blonde is dunking her head into the water.

When she reemerges, triumphant with an apple in her mouth, Lena can burst with laughter in her face. Kara’s hair is a mopping mess down her sides with the wet, tangled ribbons in it, and next thing Lena knows, Alex and Lucy are pushing Kara to her knees and tipping her head back. Kara isn’t even phased, like this is a normal treatment, but Lena gawks as they pour a concoction of a dessert into her mouth — non alcoholic, of course, just apple cider, cinnamon, and whipped cream. When Kara jumps to her feet, struggling to swallow and a mess of cinnamon over her chin, all their friends cheer and Lena shakes her head.

Kara’s a beaming fool, her hair and red sweater soaked from the game, whipped cream on her nose and her mouth sticky with juice. Lena, feeling bold from the tequila, wipes her fingers over the mess of sugar on Kara’s chin with a fond smile, and she sighs. Because Kara’s her beaming fool.

Kara’s eyes drop darkly to her mouth when Lena licks the cream from her fingers. Everyone else is moving onto dunking Winn in the bucket, but Lena raises an eyebrow at the dumbfounded way Kara stares at her, sucking off the tip of her index finger, and she smirks.

“You’re a hot mess,” she tells Kara quietly. Kara still blinks blankly at her, and Lena makes a wide gesture over her being. “You, all this. You’re soaked. If you think I’m sleeping with you tonight like this, you’re dreaming.”

Kara’s blushing now but she grins through it, shakes her head. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll shower, you princess.”

“Yes, I am a princess, thank you very much.”

She’s pulled from Kara’s side when all of a sudden Lucy’s grabbing her by the elbow, and she thinks they mean to have her go next — which, fuck no, she is so not getting her hair wet. This quickly shifts to her yanking on Sam’s wrist, who has been just on the sidelines bemusedly watching, but her eyes widen when Lena pulls her next.

Except after Sam is lugged out of the water, her dripping hair flinging over her back and apple in mouth, Lucy isn’t grabbing the apple cider but instead two liquor bottles.

“Care to do the honors?” Lucy holds them out to Lena.

“Fuck yes,” she says, eagerly taking the proffered bottles. “But I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Oh! I got this.” Kara quickly swoops up behind her, her arms snaking over Lena’s to guide her like she did all that time ago in a bowling alley with strobe lights. Kara smells like sugar and cinnamon, Lena can feel the hot tickle of her breath against her cheek, and she almost misses Sam’s mouth entirely when they pour equal shots of Fireball and apple pucker in between her teeth.

Sam’s already sputtering by the time Lena’s successfully gets the whipped cream can configured, and when she sprays it across her best friend’s face, missing her mouth, and the sprinkle of cinnamon flutters dangerously close to her eyes, Sam starts choking and gives an aggravated shout at Lena. She scoops some of the stray cream off her face and throws it at Lena in retaliation, and Lena hides behind Kara, who gets another mouthful of sweets in her face again but she doesn’t seem to mind all that much.

Even if Kara is damp and sticky, she still settles for keeping herself secured at her hip, holding onto Kara’s arm draped over her shoulders throughout the party, throughout their throng of friends under these magical glowing lights.

Kara teaches Lena how to play corn hole, tossing a sack into a wooden hole, and after two embarrassing throws — one that nearly goes off the roof edge — Lena gets into the physics of it. She messes with the weight of the sack, playing with how much volume the sand takes up inside the cloth versus how much volume can be displaced, she quickly runs through the mental calculations of a proper trajectory. It’s not long before Lena’s expertly making all her shots and Kara is boasting ecstatically to anyone paying them attention that Lena’s the best game partner she’s ever had.

Alex, on the opposing team with Lucy, raises an eyebrow at her sister.

Kara ducks her chin. “Okay. Sorry. Second best.”

Part of why she’d taken Sam for drinks beforehand was because Lena hadn’t been anticipating any being there, had imagined that no one else would be drinking out of respect to Alex. But it’s not the case, clearly, if the apple-bobbing game was anything to go by. The table beside the snacks is lined with beer and wine, and securely tucked in the center are unopened bottles of champagne sitting on a bed of purple tissue paper in a metal bin, reserved for the big drop.

Lena, leaning against Kara’s torso, pokes her stomach to get her attention. The way Kara immediately turns to look down on her, swivels her head like a puppy, has Lena smiling goofily for a moment before she remembers her question. 

“Hey, um. I know it’s not really my place to ask but, are you sure Alex is okay with all of this? The drinking, I mean.”

“Yeah, I talked to her about it.” Kara sighs glumly. “She said she’d just feel worse if everyone went out of their way to make her comfortable, that she doesn’t want to feel like… like everyone’s compromising for her, I guess? I tried to tell her no one cares about that, we just want to support her, but. She was just about walking out the door to go to the liquor store herself and stock for the party if I didn’t. Here, hold on, told her I’d check in actually, thanks for reminding me.” 

Kara jogs off to the corner of the rooftop where Alex is leaning against the cement ledge, talking to Sam. She doesn’t hear their conversation, Kara just leans into Alex’s ear and whispers something. But then Alex is glaring at her sister and she throws her juice pouch at Kara, smack in the chest. 

Kara returns to Lena cackling, wiping the juice from her face.

“What the hell did you say to her?” Lena asks incredulously as she hands her back her soda. “Also, you are seriously filthy right now.”

Kara wipes the tears from the corners of her eyes as she calms down, slinging her arm back around Lena’s neck. Lena at least has the dignity to pretend to be annoyed, yelps and recoils away from her sticky wet mess, but the blonde struggles against it. She’s persistent, and eventually she loops Lena back to her, pressing their fronts together, and Lena’s mouth zips shut.

They’re both breathing heavily, Lena’s hands are squeezed between their chests and Kara’s are wrapped around her lower waist.

Lena swallows, peering up at the soft curl of blinking eyelashes, the summertime slope of a sweet mouth. 

“I asked her how her kiddie juice was.”

Lena jerks her eyes away from Kara’s mouth. “What?”

“Alex, she’s drinking Capri-Sun. I asked her how her kiddie juice was and she threw it in my face.”

The fact that Kara says this all with a straight, serious face and a thick, low tone as if she’s telling Lena something far more intimate, makes Lena snort. And then she’s laughing, clapping her hand onto Kara’s chest, and her head falls forward to Kara’s shoulder because that twinkling gaze might be too much for right now.

Lena prods Kara in the stomach scoldingly as she pulls away, but when she looks back over, Alex is chuckling fondly and Kara’s stomach muscles are flexing with laughter under Lena’s hand, so. Her mind trails elsewhere. 

It gets to a little past eleven and Lena’s mostly sobered up by now. She finally pushes away from Kara’s sturdy frame with a firm, playful push and scoffs at Kara’s silly pout. “Okay love, no, I need to stop, I’m gonna go find Sam.”

“Boo. Don’t leave me.” Kara’s hand catches on Lena’s hand as the brunette tries to pull away. At Lena’s admonishing look, she gives Lena’s fingers a quick squeeze and lets go. “Fine. But find me again before midnight?”

Lena rolls her eyes. “Kara there’s like ten people here. It won’t be that hard.”

“Okay, but still. Find me.”

Lena steals away from Kara, finally, and makes over to join Alex and Sam in the corner while Kara watches from afar. Sam’s tied back her wet mop of a head into a ponytail, and while it’s mostly dried and cleared off the mess by now, Lena can still see a small patch of dried whipped cream at her hairline. She’ll tell her later. Maybe.

She doesn’t even catch the tail-end of their conversation, approaches just as Sam is laughing loudly and grasping Alex by the elbow in a move that is definitively not platonic. Lena doesn’t stifle her smile, lets her eyebrows rise knowingly when Sam notices her presence.

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” she asks teasingly, and the amused but miffed press of Sam’s lips suggests Lena in fact is doing just that.

“No, not at all.” Alex’s smile is relaxed, twinkling, but there’s a delay before she pulls her eyes away from Sam to Lena. “I was gonna go dig into the crab puffs anyway.”

Lena winces. “Oh, about those.”

“Don’t tell me she already finished them already.”

Lena shrugs guiltily and Alex’s jovial smile morphs into a snarl. “Oh I am going to _ kill _her.”

Alex quickly stalks off, and Lena and Sam laugh.

They talk for a bit about the party and Kara’s friends. Sam asks questions about some of the other people there, and Lena answers them to her best ability, lists off what she knows. Sam, of course, listens rather intently when Lena gets to Alex, and Lena smirks.

“So you seem to be having a good time,” she notes, raising her plastic cup of wine to her lips.

Sam scoffs and turns away, but Lena would bet her entire heritage that she’s blushing. “Yeah, well, I could say the same about you. You and that bartender chick were looking pretty cozy over there.”

“You’ve really got to start using her name at some point.”

“I will. As soon as you stop being an idiot and actually make a move.”

Lena’s smiling, but she sighs wistfully, walks behind Sam to lean against the brick barricade, putting her back to the flickering city lights and watching Kara and Alex bicker playfully across the rooftop. 

“I know I do.”

She sees Sam’s head twist from her peripheral. “Really?”

Lena nods. “Kara’s too respectful to do anything herself. She thinks I’m skittish.”

“I mean, you are.”

“Shut up.” Lena smirks. “I know that too. I’ve been giving a lot of mixed signals, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she just never so much as acknowledges the potential of something… more, between us.”

Kara’s so timid and careful of Lena’s boundaries that she’s kept practically half of her life hidden from Lena out of reverence. Lena doesn’t know how, never knew someone could be so perceptive, but Kara somehow figured out that if Lena was ever going to form a close enough bond with someone to let them in, to let her guard down, it needed to be on her terms. Because she _ is _ skittish, distrusting, paranoid, neurotic. Maybe it’s because of a lifetime of sitting in the backseat to her own life while someone else drove, but the idea that someone else is in control now, calling the shots, it would make Lena implode.

She lost everything when the news of the Neoremedium came out, and she didn’t even have much of anything to begin with.

Lena’s not fragile, she never has been. But that first month in National City, those first few _ days, _ she was grasping at the thin ends of her sanity. She was on edge, irritable, lonely. Colors were bleak, taste was dull, the world was dark. And now she’s here, with Sam, with Kara and everyone else.

It’s not glamorous, but it’s a space that’s hers.

“I just don’t know if I’m ready,” Lena confesses quietly. “To take the risk.”

Sam opens her mouth to reply, a quick retort, but Lena’s phone pings loudly from her clutch, and she’s moving to silence it when she sees the content of the notification on her screen. Even as she reads, more steadily pour in.

**Smythe Put A Ring On It, Who’s Gonna Tell Luthor? **

**If Lena Luthor fled the city after a kiss, what’s she going to do about a wedding?**

**Sorry Smythors, looks like Siobhan’s having her honeymoon elsewhere!**

There are more that pile in, clickbait blocks like Tetris dropping down her phone screen, and Lena’s stomach churns as she flicks through them, willing herself not to succumb to opening them, to torturing herself with the pictures, to caring.

Siobhan, engaged. Lena laughs bitterly, shakes her head. 

“What? What is it?” Sam inches closer to peer over Lena’s shoulder down at her phone, and immediately gags. “Oh, ew, tell me that’s a joke. Someone would really marry that shrew?”

Lena successfully manages to lock her phone and put it away, inhales sharply. “Well, I don’t care.”

“You know you can be upset about this, right?” Sam leans back to eye Lena suspiciously. “I’d be pissed if I found out even my ninth grade boyfriend got engaged.”

Lena only takes a harsh gulp of her wine, one almost too large to swallow down. 

“Is this why you’re holding back with Kara? You don’t think you’re ready because you’re not over her?”

Lena scoffs darkly. “Fuck, no. Absolutely not. I wouldn’t go back to Siobhan unless I was seriously deluded with a self-destructive complex.”

“So, what then? Since when is Lena Luthor afraid of a little risk?”

Lena turns back to look over the city abruptly. “No, I mean, this is exactly it. Siobhan and I fought constantly, all the time. There was no depth to our relationship, and we spent very little time actually alone, never actually talking to one another. But we were good together.” Lena bites her lip. “We were actually stable, together for seven years. Everyone loved us, her friends, the public, hell even my mother said if I was going to be with a woman that I made a decent choice. We did that, together, kept it alive. I was good at that. That level of a relationship, I knew how to maintain that, and I did for seven years.” 

Lena gnaws on the inside of her cheek, runs her fingers along the lip of her cup anxiously. “But even that I couldn't keep going. I wouldn’t know the first thing about keeping something so… genuine with Kara.”

“Sweetie,” Sam starts. “You just haven’t given yourself the chance.”

Lena’s nostrils flare, but otherwise she stays staring out into the black skyline, silent, ruminating.

“Listen. I’m not going to begin to try and understand what being apart of your family is like, what that’s done to you. But I know you, and I know you think everything that happened with Lex was your fault, and it’s not.”

“Okay, but I still could—”

“You are not responsible for someone else’s failures,” Sam interrupts firmly. “You don’t have to keep punishing yourself over something beyond your control. You have done incredible, revolutionary things since moving here, and I have no doubt that you’ll do countless more. But you don’t have to keep holding yourself back from living your best life with the person you want to have it with, because you_ can _ have that. Right now. Whether that’s Kara or someone else, but Lena, anyone with eyes can see that poor girl just wants the same thing.”

There’s a stiff tension holding Lena together, one that strains under the weight of a lifetime of never being good enough, never reaching high enough, never standing tall enough. There’s always been a stretch for more, she has to, it’s what was expected of her. That’s why she ran after college, why she left. It was too daunting a crest to wear. Her family gave her everything she ever needed, of course she’s grateful, of course she understands the immense privilege she comes from. She tries to at least. 

Perhaps that’s why she refuses to give in, why she feels there’s never going to be a point where she can sit down and appropriately say, okay, I’ve done enough. Because nothing will ever be enough, if there’s more to be done then she has to do it, she has to make up for everything she didn’t do all those years, she has to do what she can now because so few others are in a position to themselves. 

Yes, maybe there will always be more that she can do, more people to help and discoveries to make, and she’ll do it, she will rise to the occasion, but maybe—

Maybe there isn’t a quota she must reach before she’s allowed to seize something for herself.

She can be a hero, she can be worthy, but maybe she can be more.

More than just happy, just this. Is that really an attainable thing, realistically? To want it all, to have it all?

The tension bleeds away like falling silk, her shoulders loosen, and as she lets go, the world miraculously doesn’t come to an end. 

Lena turns to Sam, lifts her head. “‘Poor girl’?” she echoes wryly.

“Yeah, poor girl for being head over heels for you. You’re about as easy to read as Chomsky.”

Lena scoffs, but her smile thins and she drops her eyes. “You really think she is?”

Sam’s ensuing smile is affectionate, nurturing. “Yeah, babe, I do. I think you can have everything it is that you want. You’ve just gotta take it.”

Just like that.

Can it really be so simple as taking the hand of this beautiful, wondrous gift of joy that’s been right in front of her all this time, and asking to be loved?

Taking a shaky breath, Lena laughs restlessly, runs a hand over her face. “Fuck, what a party, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s not over yet.” Sam reaches out for Lena’s hand and grips it firmly, her warm eyes ever patient and stable for Lena. “Just talk to her. She might surprise you.”

On first glance over the rooftop, Kara’s actually nowhere to be seen, contrary to Lena’s remark about not having trouble finding her. 

Lena turns back to her friend once more. She doesn’t give her time to grumble and object before she winds her arms around Sam’s neck, pulls her into a bone-crushing hug.

“Oh, come on, my beer—”

“Thank you,” Lena says firmly in her ear. “Thank you for coming back into my life, and thank you for being here for me when I had nothing. I will never forget that.”

Sam grumbles as she pats Lena’s back, a low, “Yeah yeah yeah.” But when Lena pulls away, her eyes are damp and her lips are pursed like she’s trying to hold back a smile. “Whatever. Just go finally have your big rom-com moment, okay?”

Lena laughs again as she takes off, hops down off ledge and rejoins the party. Kara’s not up here, she makes two rounds of the whole rooftop before confirming that. She asks Kelly, Winn and Nia, but none of them have much of an idea, and Alex says she refuses to talk to Kara until next year. Impatience like an annoying itch is building up inside Lena, because if she doesn’t do this now, she might never have the courage to again. Also it’s like, less than half an hour until twelve, and Lena’s never been one for a hallmark moment, but maybe if she could do this before midnight then she might concede to being that kind of a romantic.

She finds Lucy, who informs her that Kara’s gone downstairs to her apartment to scavenge for more snacks after her brawl with Alex about eating most of the ones up here.

She nearly trips down the staircase twice in her haste down, has to mindfully will herself to slow down in her heels and clings to the chipped-paint metal railings. She used to love that Kara only lived on the fourth floor, an easy trek without an elevator, but now it’s fucking annoying and she wishes she were closer, because Lena’s heart is pounding in her chest and she’s ready to bring this building down to the ground if it brings her to Kara faster.

When she bursts in through the front door of Kara’s apartment, out of breath and panting, hair askew, Kara jumps in surprise from behind the refrigerator door. She has an opened container of grated parmesan cheese in one hand and a spoon in the other, a guilty, startled look on her face, and there’s a smear of white crumbs around her mouth.

Lena can’t believe she lasted three months waiting for this.

“Uh, I was just…” Kara gestures to the fridge with her spoon, capping the cheese and stuffing it back into the door. “Alex gets mean when she’s hungry, and, uh—”

“Are you seeing anyone?” Lena blurts out.

“Am I—?” Kara starts coughing on the cheese in her mouth, brings up her elbow and spins around for a glass of water. Lena comes up opposite her across the kitchen island, steadying her breathing while Kara gulps down her drink.

“Why do you always ask me this kinda stuff when I’m in the middle of something?” Kara grumbles, wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her sweater.

“Because it’s fun. So, are you? Seeing anyone?”

Lena can see Kara’s swallow, the deer-in-headlights look. “Um. No.” Kara clears her throat. “Are you?”

Lena doesn’t resist her smile, doesn’t try dampen it in the slightest. “Nope.”

“Cool.” Kara nods slowly, looks Lena over as if she’s going to say something else, and then points over shoulder. “Anyway, I’m just gonna—”

“So are you the relationship type?” Lena asks, cocking her head as she splays her hands along the edge of the island. “Or do you prefer just one night stands, casual, that sort of deal?”

Lena’s never heard someone draw out an _ um _for as long as Kara does now.

“Um… well… I prefer… serious stuff,” Kara says, painfully slow, her cheeks tingeing pink.

“Huh. Interesting.”

Kara’s immediate in her response. “Why’s that interesting?”

“So why aren’t you in a relationship right now, then?” Lena asks, ignoring Kara. “What are you waiting for, exactly?”

Kara laughs nervously and rubs at the back of her neck. “Um, you know… the right person, I guess? Like everyone else. Why, what are you—”

“How about me?”

There’s a moment of nothing, where Lena’s heart pounds against her ribcage, where she thinks this might be the step off the ledge, where she isn’t afraid to look down this time.

“What?” 

“Right now, us.” The room is spinning and dizzying and Lena is starting to lose bravado, she can’t believe she’s doing this, but she can’t imagine doing anything else. “You said you’re waiting for the right person. What about me?”

Kara stares back at Lena across the kitchen, her mouth small, cheeks red, eyes so round and so pale. “I, uh — you um,” she stammers, scratching at her nose. “You mean…?”

“Yes.” 

“Lena, I—”

“Because I think I’m a decent candidate,” Lena goes on, winding slowly around the counter to approach Kara, slow, careful, coy. “So if there’s an application pool, I hope I’m in it. I mean, I hope that you’d consider me.”

“Um.” Kara takes a step back, her hands going to the edge of the counter behind her as Lena comes closer, and she laughs again. “You’re funny, you know that? Why do we always say I’m the funny one? You’ve got great jokes.”

Lena comes close enough to brace her hands on either side of Kara, leaning close enough to feel the gentle puffs of Kara’s breath but not enough for them to be touching. 

“I’m not joking, Kara.”

Kara glances back and forth between Lena’s eyes in a panic, and it’s not until she notices the way the bartender's shoulders are trembling that Lena pulls back, suddenly small with the sinking terror that she’s read everything wrong.

“Do you want this to be joke?” she asks quietly, uncertainty as sharp under her sternum as icicles.

It might just be a trick of the light, something with the shadows over her face, but Kara’s eyes look damp when she makes an ever so slight shake of her head, gray and blue like the galaxies they crossed to get here.

“I don’t.”

Lena’s not sure if she wants to laugh or cry. “So would you?”

“Would I what?”

“Would you pick me?”

Kara deflates, her shoulders fall, her white-knuckle grip on the counter behind her loosens and the look she levels Lena with is wistful, delicate like dandelions.

“I’d always pick you, Lee.” 

When Lena steps forward and stretches up on her toes to kiss Kara, it feels like the answer to a front-row prayer, like relinquishing a throne she never wanted, like giving in to everything she’s so afraid of facing, only to discover it’s just the early morning light.

Sunlight, cream-like warmth, addictive in its richness.

There’s no shock or hesitation in the way Kara’s mouth responds to hers, like she knew this was as inevitable as the sunset falling.

Here, tonight, it’s only them, just Kara’s wet lips between Lena’s, her whimpering breath.

Kara immediately melts under Lena’s touch, her arms winding around Lena’s back and she welds them together, her lips parting like honey for her. Lena sighs into her mouth, a low murmur catching at the back of her throat as she tightens her hold around Kara’s neck, presses their chests and together and oh, she doesn’t know what the hell they’ve been waiting around for.

Kara pushes Lena back against the island in a move that’s jarring, electric, her lower back thudding against the edge and Lena gasps into her mouth. She scrabbles her arms around Kara’s shoulders, pulls her in tighter, presses herself up higher and closer, about ready to climb on top of Kara in the middle of the kitchen if she can’t quench this overwhelming desire to just have her impossibly _ closer _. Because it’s been too long, they’ve spent so much time not making use of the skin that aches to be touching, Lena can’t hold out any longer. 

“Kara,” she mumbles into the kiss, wanting, dazed, scraping her blunt fingernails possessively along the nape of the bartender’s neck. The mix of their gasping breaths into each other’s wet mouths is hot, stifling, makes Lena want to unravel completely.

The blonde pulls back with a shuddering breath to look at Lena’s face, her eyebrows tight and full of concern. “What, what is it?”

Lena squeaks in objection, yanks Kara back to her. “Don’t you fucking dare stop kissing me.”

“But you just—”

Lena’s tongue twists between Kara’s lips, runs along her bottom lip and flits along the edge of Kara’s before retracting, leaving Kara to chase back after her. And then Kara’s tongue is hot in her mouth, gentle, prying but polite, slick as it runs along the front edge of her teeth, and Lena shivers, her hips jolting against Kara’s, but the blonde stands tall and firm against her. The sounds of only their mouths moving together is humid, delirious, with Lena’s low groans and Kara’s panting breath. Kara’s mouth moves expertly with hers, painfully precise and languid, supple, and Lena doesn’t know the difference between wanting to devour or to be devoured. 

She’s actually about ready to tug Kara’s clothes off of her, to beg her down to her knees, because she can’t properly breathe like this, a desperate knit in her brow as she clutches at Kara’s broad shoulders. But then Kara’s swooping her arms under Lena’s ass and lifting her onto the counter, and, right, this is how a few late-night fantasies have definitely played out. Things topple around her as Kara slides her back, something clatters to the floor, but a rush of heat floods between Lena’s legs because Kara just fucking lifted her like she’s nothing and, oh God, can someone die of arousal?

Lena wastes no time in wrapping her legs around Kara’s waist, hooking her ankles together to press Kara tightly against her, the hem of her dress riding up high along her thighs. She can feel it, Kara’s muscled midsection up against the crotch of her tights, but just barely, just a brush, this isn’t the proper angle for any solid friction, these sinful tights aren’t pulled up high enough, and Lena sighs again into Kara’s mouth, rolls into the pressure that isn’t there. But Kara’s hands fall to Lena’s hips over the wrinkles of dress, take a full grip around her edges and it’s so possessive that Lena’s exhale through her nose is quivering. She rolls her hips against Kara’s stomach, feels Kara’s hands move along with the motion, and it’s delicious and hot and Lena can’t get enough of the way Kara tastes, of the mind boggling heat of their bodies, of the way she wants more.

She starts to giggle then, her lips pinching, and instead of pulling away this time lest Lena kills her, Kara just gives a distracted, questioning hum.

“It’s just, um.” Lena sucks in a gulp of breath deliriously, mesmerized by the skillful fold of Kara’s lips, of Kara’s hands deftly rubbing up the sides of her waist.

“You—” Her voice pitches when those hands run under her chest, just the barest graze underneath the tight press of breasts, it makes her shudder, and what the fuck was she even going to say?

When Kara’s mouth makes a wet trail from her mouth down across her jaw, sucks on the corner where it comes to Lena’s neck, Lena think she might pass out from how good this feels, like she’s some touch-starved teenager kissing a girl for the first time. Lena tips her head back, her hands fisting into Kara’s hair, matted and tangled from the games, and she holds the bartender against her neck as Kara plants sloppy, thrilling kisses along the sensitive skin.

“You were saying?” Kara murmurs, and the gentle vibration of her lips against Lena’s pulse point makes her dizzy.

Then she’s giggling again, mouth stretching into a grin. “I was going to say, you taste like—” Kara bites down on a patch of her skin and Lena lets out a particularly loud moan, her thighs clenching around Kara’s sides and a new jolt of insatiable throbbing bursts between her legs. 

“_Fuck. _ Cheese, Kara.”

Kara pauses, her hands stilling. “Huh?”

Lena closes her eyes, succumbing to the fact that she’s a horny, helpless mess like she’s sixteen again and they’re not even at second base yet. “I said you taste like cheese, Danvers.”

Kara chuckles against Lena’s neck, ducking her head so that her teeth brush against Lena’s collarbone. “If I’d known,” she murmurs quietly between softer, slower kisses, “that you were gonna do the whole New Year’s Eve procedure, I probably would’ve brushed my teeth.”

Lena grins at the ceiling, her eyes closed, and splays her fingers along the base of Kara’s neck, twirling the thin strands of hair. “Honestly?” she says, her voice low. “None of this was planned.”

A hum reverberates from Kara’s mouth to Lena’s skin as Kara draws her mouth back up to Lena’s, her hand cradling the back of Lena’s head to pull her back to eye-level. Lena blinks her eyes back open with a dreamy smile as Kara brushes her hair from her face.

“No?” Kara asks with a scrunched nose and Lena laughs. “You sure? This feels kinda staged.”

Lena lets her hands fall forward over Kara’s breastbone, spreads across her shoulders, greedily drinking in the warmth beneath her palms. “It’s about as planned out as a decision from ten minutes ago can really be.”

“Oh.” Kara’s nose nudges against Lena’s as she presses a delicate kiss to her cheek. 

“What?” Lena’s eyes drift back shut, lets the blonde flower her with gentle grazes of her mouth over her face. 

“Nothing, nothing.” A kiss to her cheekbone, her temple. “I just thought, maybe, that you’d been thinking about this for a while.”

“Hm, not really, no.” Lena feels Kara’s smirk against her forehead. “Just figured I’d give this a whirl. Spontaneous thing, surely you understand.”

Kara’s laugh is breathless as her cheek falls against Lena’s, and Lena curls herself around the blonde’s frame more tightly, blissfully tucking her head in the crook of her neck. 

Lena licks her lips, staring down at Kara’s shoulder as she catches her breath. But being pressed against her, their bodies intricately intertwined like they are, she feels as if she has a tactile visualization of Kara, she doesn’t need to look her in the eyes.

It feels safer this way, actually. The euphoria in her chest is massive, it’s all-encompassing and Lena thinks she needs to calm down for a second or her heart might burst because Lena can’t remember the last time she was so happy, so relieved, so liberated.

“Can I ask you something?” she says quietly, fingering the small hairs at the back of Kara’s neck. 

“No, I’m closed for business right now, actually. Can you check back in later?” Kara tightens her arms around Lena’s waist even as says this, buries her face into Lena’s hair and blows into her ear, and Lena giggles and swats her away.

“You’re being an idiot,” she laughs, pulling back to catch the cheeky grin on Kara’s face. The bartender’s cheeks are flushed, strays of her hair askew and wispy around the sides, but her eyes are gleaming.

“Just around you.” Kara’s smile softens into a cute, dimpled smile that makes her look younger, and Lena’s heart melts. “What’s the question?”

Lena’s legs are growing sore and they fall to Kara’s sides but she still holds the woman close, dangles her arms over her shoulders and drops her gaze to Kara’s pink lips. “Were you going to kiss me at midnight? You told me to find you before the ball drops.”

Her already red cheeks only darken, and Kara’s mouth is pinched with sheepishness as she hesitates. “That would have been a really cool idea but no. I dunno, I was just gonna like, hug you or something.”

Lena bites her bottom lip, stares at Kara blankly, and sighs. “You really are so stupid.”

When Lena tugs Kara’s mouth back to hers, Kara smiles against her lips and Lena thinks this just might be sweeter than blue raspberry cotton candy.

They don’t actually get the chance to watch the clock tick midnight, and there’s the boom of celebrations and pounding music from outside and other apartments all throughout so there’s just a ten minute window they know it falls somewhere in. Otherwise, they’re completely wrapped in each other, all exploring hands and urgent, enthusiastic kisses. It ranges from Lena hopping off the counter so that Kara is just straight up carrying her, insisting that she wants to go to Kara’s bedroom _ right now, _ to Kara draping her softly over the couch with an affectionate laugh.

“Kara, this is the couch.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I said your bed.”

“Everyone’s gonna be back any second now.” Even as she says this, though, Kara’s hands are running under Lena’s dress, her cold fingers sloping over Lena’s sensitive, tingling skin and Lena rocks up into her touch, tugs Kara more tightly against her. But Kara remains elusive and firm, hovering, not quite giving in, and Lena groans.

“I don’t _ care _, we’ll give them a fucking show then.”

“Lena I don’t think—”

When the front door bursts open, Lena shoves Kara off her in alarm and the blonde crashes onto the floor with a muffled shout.

“Oh hey guys,” Lena calls coolly as she rises from the couch as gracious as water, tugging down her dress and fixing her hair. “We didn’t miss the fireworks, did we?”

Lucy and Alex are at the front of the group, and they pause mid-laughter as they take in Lena’s nonchalant radiance and Kara slowly climbing to her feet, groaning in the living room.

They look at each other apprehensively. Lucy scratches her nose and Alex says, “Uh, yeah. You guys did.”

“You okay over there, Little Danvers?”

“Yep!” Kara calls back stiffly, stretching out her joints. “I was just, ah, getting some yoga in real quick.”

Everyone else is pouring into the apartment now and spreading out, mostly unaware of Lena and Kara’s erratic behavior, but Alex isn’t letting it go just yet. “Uh-huh… you hate yoga.”

Lena frowns and turns back to the blonde. “You told me you’d go to a yoga class with me next week.”

Wide-eyed, Kara glances between the three woman nervously. “Um. New Year’s resolution?”

Alex and Lucy share a knowing snicker, and Lena gives Kara a playfully stern look that implies they’ll talk about this later.

“Whatever, anyway, it got cold, so we’re moving down here. Come help me cut the cake,” Alex tells her sister, nodding at the fridge.

Kara gives Lena an adorably timid smile as she passes her by, and Lena struggles to suppress her own. Because honestly? She doesn’t care much at all about hiding this from their friends. She’s really only holding off from screaming out the window that she wants Kara to fuck her brains out because their nosiness would only stall off however long it’ll take for Lena to get Kara alone again.

She’s a woman with a mission, you see.

It doesn’t change the fact that Sam’s got a shit-eating grin as Lena approaches her in the kitchen.

Lena, plucking Sam’s champagne from her hands, manages to feign cool indifference for about thirty seconds.

“Yes, so, I might have taken your advice. Seized my happiness, all that.” 

“Mhm. I can see that.”

Lena gives Sam a questioning glance over the rim of the cup, and her friend gestures to her mouth. 

“Your lips look like you did that suction cup challenge.”

Lena snorts her champagne, the bubbling wine dribbling down her chin, and Sam cackles wickedly, patting Lena on the back. Nia checks over and asks what’s so funny, wants in on the joke, and when Lena just continues to be a stammering fool, much like Kara before, Sam only laughs harder.

The party shows no sign of dying down.

Two never-ending, unfathomably deep cups of champagne later, Lena expects to have cooled off some, less frantic in her resonating desire, but Sam comments more than once on her eye-fucking across the room and, well. The alcohol maybe only makes it worse, and if Kara’s not going to be taking her pants off anytime soon then she could at least have her hands on her.

After she catches Kara’s eye, who’s mid-conversation with Kelly across the room, and the blonde gives her a tiny wave and mouths _ I miss you, _ Lena loses her self-control.

This quickly transitions into Lena re-glueing herself to Kara’s side for the rest of the night, and all things considered, it’s not much different from how the evening started. Actually, it’s not different at all. Everyone still laughs and jokes with them like normal, no one bats an eye at the way Kara’s got her arm looped around Lena’s shoulders and how Lena’s hand is tucked into the back pocket of Kara’s jeans. Sam of course keeps up with the meaningful looks and wiggling eyebrows, but even she wanes off, gets distracted. 

Lena catches Sam more than few times chatting with Alex privately in a corner of the party over the next couple hours, and oh, she knows she’ll ask about that later. 

It feels cathartically different from hanging to Siobhan’s side at a party, being an A-list lesbian Hollywood couple that was a fan favorite and a sharply fabricated image. Before, Lena was an artifact, a demonstration. Now she’s just part of the moving tide.

Lena didn’t think someone like Kara could possibly know who Lena is and still care about her so much, didn’t think she could have a room of people like this want to spend their holiday with her, but here she is. There’s no scrabble for self-gain or a secondary agenda. There’s just Lena in Kara’s arms, as if it was imminent.

Lena does well to holster her other desires, aside from the relative groping and the occasional whisper into Kara’s ear. Actually, Lena’s even the one to win this game, because Kara eventually breaks around 2 a.m. and sneaks Lena away down the hall towards the bathroom when no one is paying attention.

Lena, giddy and gleeful, trots along as Kara pulls her by the hand away from the party, and when the door is finally closed, Lena immediately yanks Kara against her.

Kara gasps into Lena’s mouth, as if this is still unexpected, and Lena supposes it is in a way. She’s a little foggy now with the champagne in her system, and the night is starting to feel too dreamy and beautiful to be real. But if she is asleep, she will be sure to capitalize as much as she can on the chance to kiss Kara, because honestly there’s nothing else she should really be doing anyway.

“You need to—” Kara mumbles between kisses, her hands kneading Lena’s hips. “—stop saying stuff like—”

Lena drops from her tiptoes to kiss down the length of Kara’s neck, grazing her teeth over her soft Adam’s apple, and Kara sighs blithely under her attention.

Smiling, Lena kisses her way up to Kara’s jaw, licks the tip of her earlobe. “You really should feel how wet I am right now.” 

Kara’s entire body shivers before she’s pressing Lena more roughly back against the door.

“Yeah, that, stuff like _ that _,” Kara groans, grabbing Lena’s face with both hands and prying her lips apart with her own. Lena sinks into the kiss with a hum, and she’d sag down to the floor in a puddle of bliss if it weren’t for Kara’s delicious iron grip on her.

“I can deal with it myself later if you really want.” Lena hooks her fingers through the front belt loops of Kara’s jeans. She slacks a little with the coyness, hesitates. “I mean, if this is too much too fast, we don’t—”

“No,” Kara practically growls. “No, no, I definitely, um, want to be the one. To take care of that.”

Lena grins. “Okay, so. Get rid of everyone.”

“I can’t.” Kara exhales defeatedly, nudging her nose against Lena’s. “Do you have any idea how late these guys can stay up? Last year we stayed up until seven.”

“Kara. I am not waiting five hours.”

“Okay what exactly do you expect me to do?”

“So you’re telling me that you have no reservations about having sex, but I’m supposed to just be fine with you not fucking me tonight because our friends are partying? This isn’t adding up.”

A small whine slips from Kara’s throat at that, and she sighs dramatically, her forehead falling against Lena’s. But then the corner of her mouth twists up and she meets Lena’s eye. “Our friends?” she echoes.

“Your friends plus Sam, whatever.”

“No, no.” Kara shakes her head and strokes Lena’s hair behind her ear, her smile wide and tender. “Our friends. I like that.”

“You are such an idiot.” Lena tries to feign exasperation, her lips tightly pressed together and her nose scrunched, but she knows she fails because there is something rather sweet about it, isn’t there? 

“You know, you keep saying that but you also keep kissing me, so.”

Of course Lena kisses her again, deep and desperate and annoyed and smitten, and Kara laughs into her mouth. But Lena inevitably pulls away again, takes her hand and pulls the door back open. At Kara’s pout to the end of their makeout session, Lena squeezes her fingers.

“We’re going to my place.”

“But the party’s still going on,” Kara points out as she follows Lena through the hallway.

“Kara. Ask me if I care.”

“Do you care that the party is still—”

“No.”

No one seems all that surprised when they return and Lena announces they’re leaving, together. 

Before they can make a clean break, however, Lucy and Alex are quick to Kara on each side. 

“Oh, before you go,” Alex says, tapping her sister’s shoulder. “Buncha stuff left on the roof. Help us bring it down and I won’t kill you for leaving me alone to host.”

On Kara’s other side, Lucy gives a saccharine smile, and Kara sighs.

She looks back to Lena. “I’ll be right back, then we can go?”

“Sure, do your thing.”

She lingers with Sam, and her best friend opens her mouth but Lena swivels on her quickly. “Not. One. Word.” 

Sam mimes a zipper over her mouth and Lena elbows her.

They manage to get everything downstairs but the lights and tables in only two trips, deciding to get the rest tomorrow, and Kara comes back to Lena’s side with a tight-lipped smile. 

They’re both given shit for leaving. Sam does to Lena, for leaving a party she brought her to without her, and Lucy to Kara for bailing early on an event she’s a co-hosting in her own apartment, but it’s all sarcastic and playful. Kara starts to apologize, even gets the words out, and Lena can see her wavering in her decision to leave with Lena, but her grip on Kara’s hand is unyielding as they grab their coats and she rushes them through the door.

She knows Sam’s mostly kidding anyways, that she completely endorses this chaos. And Lena’s gotten to know Lucy fairly well, she knows she’s maybe rooting for them a little too. Lena doesn’t let herself feel guilty. They have Kara year-round, this is her night.

It’s not long before they’re in the back of a car and Lena is weighing the pros and cons of a poor Lyft rating on her profile in favor of climbing into Kara’s lap and sucking her tongue into her mouth.

Her knee bounces and she settles for curling into Kara’s side under her arm, pressing into her warmth, inhaling her sweet scent.

Kara’s quiet on the ride over. Because Kara’s not saying anything, Lena’s not sure if that means she should or shouldn’t be saying anything but there’s nothing really to say, so. The sparse, few glances they do share are bordering on shy and juvenile, like Lena hasn’t been whispering obscenities in her ear for the last two hours about where exactly she wants Kara’s mouth.

Okay, maybe that’s why she’s feeling a little timid right now. Too much?

In a moment of nervous hesitance, Lena reaches across Kara’s lap for her wrist and pulls gently, a soft tug, until Kara takes her hand from her pocket. Kara still doesn’t say anything, and Lena all of a sudden feels too small to look her in the eye so she keeps her face buried into her shoulder as she takes her hand. There’s something inexorably different now about lacing her fingers through Kara’s. It’s the same warmth pressed against her palm, the same brush of dry knuckles under her fingertips. It’s the same person underneath her touch, but there’s an overwhelming inflation in her chest now that she doesn’t know how to name, what to identify it as.

When they pull up to Lena’s apartment, Kara doesn’t let go of her hand.

On the elevator ride up, Kara’s thumb brushes over the thin, silver ring on Lena’s index finger.

As Lena digs through her purse single-handedly for her keys, and Kara squeezes her fingers, Lena’s not sure where this is going but she thinks that she’s ready for the drop.

Because even after everything, if being with Kara is just the beginning of the end, that might be okay, she might be able to live with that.

Everything ends, of course, no one’s pretending otherwise. But maybe if Kara is that endpoint, her final destination, if her life comes to an end where Kara exists, then surely it’s a privilege to have even come this far at all.

The door clicks behind them, Lena flicks on the light of the foyer, and Kara’s hand falls from Lena’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i made up a ship name for lena and siobhan. what of it
> 
> this wasn't supposed to end here but big surprise it got too long so here we are
> 
> i owe the rest of this fic to milly @melbnst everyone say thank u milly


	11. all good things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so like it's sunday somewhere. you can thank joy for pointing that out
> 
> ...also this chapter's rated [M]
> 
> tw for some potentially coercive language regarding sex

They stare at each other.

“Hi,” Lena says softly.

The pale fluorescent glow sprinkling over Kara’s twist of hair as it falls down her shoulders, the pink prize of her cheeks, the sweet turn of her lips, Lena thinks the applied theory of Kara might just be infinite.

Kara swallows, her hands back into her pockets. “Hi.”

Neither of them move, neither of them look anywhere else but at the other.

“I really—”

“So I think—”

They both stop, and Lena feels a slip of heat over her cheeks as Kara ducks her head.

“Sorry,” Kara says dryly. “You go ahead.”

Lena’s feeling a lot less brave and gutsy than she was before, but she thinks she might be doing a decent job of keeping her blush from spreading any further down her face. She levels her voice to stay low, keeps her tone even. 

“I was just going to say that I… I need you to touch me.”

No her blush is definitely spreading.

Kara tilts her head, her features softening, and she adoringly, finally, steps back to Lena, takes her face in her hands. Her palm is soft against Lena’s jaw, her long fingers looping behind her ear, and Lena wonders if this is what absolute security feels like.

Her face inches from Lena’s and with eyes like twilight, Kara’s soft smile drops at the corners. “Like this?” she murmurs, the pad of her thumb swiping across Lena’s cheekbone.

Lena covers Kara’s hand with her own, gaze flickering over her face. “Not exactly.”

“Lena.” Kara’s lips press into a thin line, but her gaze is glued to Lena’s mouth. “I’m sorry, I — I don’t think this is a good idea anymore.”

Lena’s stomach drops like glass shattering against the hardwood floor.

But she keeps on a tough face, holds herself strong. “If this isn't something you're ready for, I can go. I didn't mean to... pressure you."

Kara looks like she wants that even less. “That’s not what I mean.”

“Then… what?”

The bartender’s eyes wobble like rain drops down the window pane, and Lena hates it. 

“This. You and me.”

Kara’s hands fall away from Lena’s face.

There’s an immediate humiliation, a gut-wrenching anxiety that floods over Lena’s entire being like a sticky smoke screen, and it would be reflexive to shut down right now, to run, to hide, to cry in an alley or bury herself in her work and pretend none of this happened, that this isn’t happening, that Kara isn’t saying this to her and Lena isn’t suffocating, because of_ course _ all good things must come to an end.

But after all this time, she’d like to think she’s stronger than that.

“If you’re about to tell me this is all in my head, that I was wrong about this, then please don’t even try because we both know that’s bullshit,” Lena says a rush, like they’re low on time, because she’s strong enough to puff up her chest but she doesn’t know how long she can hold it out for. 

“No, no, Lena that’s not what I’m saying at all.” Kara runs her hands back through her hair, turns back into Lena’s living room. “Of course I want this, it’s just, it’s complicated, okay?”

Lena huffs. “Uncomplicate it then.”

“It’s not that simple, I mean—” Kara drops onto Lena’s couch exhaustedly. “_I’m _ complicated.”

Lena stays standing in front of her, arms crossed. She’s honestly just feeling childish at this point. 

Like, okay, there’s probably no perfect moment for Kara to tell Lena the truth, but Lena sure as hell knows it’s not right now. She’d do anything to be rid of the lingering omen of Kara’s secret by now, she absolutely wants Kara to be honest with her, but really she’d rather just deal with that in the morning. 

Because now that she knows what kissing Kara feels like, she doesn’t want to stop, go back.

“Kara, listen. I don’t care.” She sinks onto the couch beside her, takes Kara’s stiffly coiled hands in her own. “I know you have baggage, and I know that you know I do too. But I don’t care. I want it, I want your complicated secrets and I want to show you mine, but I promise you that all of it can wait.”

Kara looks both so pained and endeared when she lifts her gaze to Lena. “There’s things you don’t know, stuff I haven’t told you, we — we can’t do this, _I_ can’t do this to you—”

“_I don’t care_.” Lena climbs over onto Kara’s lap and takes her face in her hands, desperate to make her understand. “All relationships are complicated, that’s how they are, and that’s the whole point. You get through it together. You can tell me everything, later, whenever you want, whenever you can.”

Kara’s already shaking her head, her breath coming in short, fragile breaths against Lena’s chin. “No, you don’t get it, you won't, you need to—”

“Please.” Lena’s voice is only a whisper. “Not now, please let it wait. Tomorrow, I promise, we can talk about everything but right now, please, understand there is nothing I will hold against you.”

“Why?” Kara’s hands rise to grasp Lena’s wrists, both comforting and frightened. “Why won’t you just let me say this? I need to be honest with you because everything is changing and we can’t just go back after this, I can’t let this happen without you knowing the full picture, without giving you the chance to judge for yourself whether you can trust me or not.”

Lena has spent so much time overanalyzing everything, reading between the lines, shredding the book apart. She scoured the internet for intimate details on Kara’s life, she spent three days following her around, she spied on her and she practically forced Kara to open up for her, to let her into the deepest nooks of her life and introduce her to her sister. Lena dug until there was nowhere left to go, until she hit the metal slate of an empty crater’s floor and kept pounding relentlessly as if there was more to unearth.

But there wasn’t.

Nothing is as black and white as she’s been desperate to see. There is no story where Kara is perfect, but there’s not one where she’s wicked and vile either. It’s not fair for Lena to project an impossible ideal onto her, to put Kara so high up on a pedestal that she can barely see the floor anymore. Kara doesn’t have to be completely innocent or fault-free, because that’s not real life, no one is, least of all Lena and she should understand that better than anyone.

For once she just wants to let go of her suffocating paranoia, this debilitating need to understand everything to the fullest extent imaginable. She just wants to lean on this feeling in her gut, this pull to trust, this drive she didn’t think existed, this unyielding blind faith in Kara when Lena never thought she could possibly believe this much in someone simply because she wants to.

She just wants to cling to that, if only for one more night.

“Because, darling, I already trust you.” Lena brushes her fingers over Kara’s trembling mouth, along her chin and over her jaw. “Because I want you to know that no matter what you tell me, it’s going to be alright. Because right now I only want you, and if you want me too, if _this_ is what you want, if you're okay, then... We've been fools waiting for far too long already, don’t you think?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Kara’s eyes are wet now, her voice cracked and choked, and it makes Lena’s chest ache that she has the capability to bring Kara to the brink like this. It’s astonishing, because of course she knows Kara cares, but to see her unsteady and just as terrified as Lena is breathtaking, it’s a medium of art all on its own.

Lena’s hands wind up Kara’s arms until their spread across her collarbones, curling around the edges of her neck, but Kara just shakes her head frantically. 

“No, Lena, you don’t understand. I don’t wanna mess this up, and if we do this then I will, this won’t end well for either of us and I’m just going to ruin everything.”

Lena licks her lips, pulls back just enough to raise Kara’s chin and hold her pale gaze. “So ruin me.”

There’s a moment of suspension, of Kara’s unshed tears glistening under the lights, switching back and forth across Lena’s face, something like giving up, something like hope.

Kara’s the one to kiss her this time. She leans forward, cranes her neck.

It’s soft, just the plump press of her warm, wet mouth to Lena’s, a sensual twist of lips fitting together as easy as holding her hand. 

There’s a dampness that’s slippery between their cheeks as she kisses her back, and she doesn’t open her eyes to check but she thinks it’s Kara who’s crying. Lena murmurs sweet nothings into her mouth, massages her hands over her broad shoulders, wanting more than anything to alleviate her of her tears but at the same time mesmerized by the beauty of how intricately interlaced yearning and heartache can be.

Lena’s spent so long drinking in Kara’s safe embraces, her powerful care, has made a safety net out of her affection these last few months. Kara has made her feel like there’s nowhere else in the world she could be safer, even while standing on the brink of a cliff edge like this. 

She wants to repay the favor, wants to give Kara back everything she’s given her. 

Everything, everything.

Lena always imagined their first time would be frantic, hungry, playful. She’s had countless fantasies floating around her mind since the day they met. Since she first saw Kara step over the threshold of her apartment, she’s dreamed incessantly of Kara fucking her on the dining room table, of their clothes being strewn about the kitchen and her moans echoing off the crisp white walls and shimmering tiled floors. She thought the curtains would be drawn open and the city on full view, that they’d only have a few minutes to make this count before one of them has to go, that Lena would be reduced to only a stammering, whining mess, begging Kara to make her come, begging for more, always more. It’d be stifling and hot and Lena’s imagined it plenty of times but she never really pictured it like this.

She didn’t imagine shuffling back off Kara’s lap to her feet and holding out her hand, she didn’t imagine Kara would have tear stains down her cheeks intermixed with leftover smears of gold glitter from her abandoned New Year’s glasses. Kara looks so small, gazing back up at Lena, her vulnerability so loud in the darkness of this three a.m. affair. 

Lena’s been so terrified of showing any part of herself that she wonders if this is just as hard for Kara as it is for her.

“Are you okay?” she asks, walking backwards and leading her to the bedroom, reaching behind her to pull down the zipper of her low-back dress.

"Yes."

“Are you okay?” she asks as she guides Kara’s hands to slip under neckline of the fabric, to push it down her shoulders and caress down the slope of her skin.

"Y-Yes."

“Are you okay?” she asks as she steps out of it, as Kara’s mouth parts open like rose petals.

Lena runs her hands down the frontside of Kara’s clothed torso, leans into her sturdy weight with a sigh as Kara’s squeezes her hips and — timidly, modestly — pulls Lena’s body against hers. Lena presses slow, papery kisses to Kara’s jawline, her cheek, the corner of her mouth, all the while pressing her hands under the collar of her sweater and soothing over tense muscles.

“Is this okay?” she whispers again, finally, their mouths not even millimeters apart, practically still touching as she digs her hands deeper under Kara’s shirt, spreading it open to reveal chiseled collarbones. 

"Are you?"

"Much, much more than okay."

Kara just sighs before she dives.

Her whole demeanor changes and she shifts forward with a fresh flare of confidence, her hands immediately scooping under Lena’s ass and lifting her into her arms. Lena gasps into her mouth, and it’s with a dizzying burst of pure want between her legs that she hooks her ankles around Kara’s back, the blonde’s hands deliciously firm under her thighs.

The bed is only a few feet away, mere steps, and so it’s intoxicating that Kara isn’t lifting her for any practical reason but simply to show that she _ can. _

Lena knows Kara needs to take this slow, that this isn’t the quick and rough she was desperate to rub out in Kara’s living room. This is delicate, the meeting of their lips, it’s sweeter than a springtime, it’s warm like morning coffee.

But it doesn’t change the hungry, sloppy way she kisses Kara as she’s carried to bed, tongue dipping into her mouth, breath hot and short. She scrapes her nails over Kara’s scalp, her tangled mess of hair. As her hands splay lower, down over the sweet strain of muscular shoulders, it’s painfully evident how much clothing Kara’s still wearing. Lena huffs impatiently as she yanks at the collar of her sweater, hooking one arm around Kara’s neck for support while the other struggles to fit down between their bodies and pull free the hem of this useless thing.

Lena’s just barely gotten the sweater up around Kara’s middle before she feels the jostle of Kara’s knees hitting the bed, and where she expects to be dropped onto the mattress, she’s instead lowered, slowly laid back into the sheets, as delicate as dandelions. This tender care just leaves Lena more desperate, more eager for Kara’s touch, for her body, her worship, and she cants her hips upwards into Kara’s, fisting her hands into her top to pull her closer.

When Kara separates their mouths for only a second, to readjust her hold as she crawls over her, Lena only gets just a moment to tear the sweater off over Kara’s head. It catches her off guard, which is ridiculous, and Lena lets out an ecstatic laugh when Kara loses her balance, her elbow slipping, and she collapses on top of Lena with an adorable grunt.

“You are such a brat,” Kara grumbles, pushing herself back up to hover over Lena.

With a space finally between them, Lena’s already working at the buttons of Kara’s wrinkled shirt with a smirk. “This is old news, darling. And you’re still wearing too many clothes. Are you going to help me take this off, or what?”

Kara licks her lips as her gaze drags down to the rise and fall of Lena’s chest, the swell of flesh straining underneath black lace. 

“Huh. I hadn’t noticed, I was a little busy.”

“Well, I’m noticing.” Lena undoes her belt buckle once she finishes with the shirt, flicks open the button of her jeans. “Please learn to multitask and fix it.”

The side of Kara’s mouth lifts in a smirk. “You’re saying please already?”

Lena rolls her eyes, and tugs petulantly on her pants, struggling to get them down her hips. “Yes, and you won’t hear it again if you’re not naked in five seconds.”

Kara rushes to kick off her clothes rather quickly after that, though she does get tangled up in pulling her sports bra over her head and stumbles backwards, and it sends Lena rolling onto her side with laughter again. When Kara finally comes back down over her, pushing her onto her back and straddling her waist, her cheeks are red and she’s pouting.

“You’re being so mean to me right now.” Kara sits back up on Lena’s lap, refusing to bend back down for Lena’s wanting lips. “I feel like you’re supposed to be nicer than this.”

Kara looks ethereal like this, her bare chest, the crease of a toned stomach like a ribbon down her middle, her hair disheveled and chaotic. It’s dark in Lena’s room, neither of them had a thought to flick on the lights, but with the curtains drawn back, moonlight spills into the room and it leaves her skin glowing silver, her eyes glassy like stars.

Lena smiles, bringing her hands up to Kara’s bare waist and she rolls her hips up into the woman on top of her. She delights in the way Kara stutters, how her jaw drops open as her sensitive center rubs against the skin of Lena’s pelvis, she can feel the slick trail it leaves behind, and Lena’s grin widens. 

“I can do whatever I want, and you know you’re gonna let me,” she tells her.

Kara nods stiltedly, distractedly, hardly listening to her words as she grinds down onto Lena’s lower abdomen. “Uh-huh, yeah, probably.”

“You know, for someone who didn’t want to do this five minutes ago, you are already extremely wet for me.”

A moan like a hum growls in Kara’s throat, and she bites on her bottom lip. “That— that is so not what I said, I never said I didn’t want this.”

Lena watches the woman on top of her, someone both timid with her desire but unabashed in her sexuality, how she exposes and opens herself for Lena like this, her bare chest, her muscled stomach. Kara’s eyes flutter like she’s struggling to even keep them open, and Lena’s mesmerized in how she’s barely even touched her and Kara already seems to be unravelling, just getting herself off by rubbing herself against Lena’s body. 

Lena never knew that being used could be so fucking hot.

She squeezes the jutting corner of Kara’s hips, feeling a tight build up in her chest, and she doesn’t know if it has to do more with the erratic throbbing between her legs, the arousal like a flood of heat over her entire body, or it’s simply overwhelming adoration for this _ stupid _, goofy, idiot blonde on top of her. All she knows is that there’s a well of something pressing behind her eyes, this unfolding exhilaration, the understanding that this is really happening.

Lena swallows, lifts her hips up to meet Kara’s slow, lazy rhythm, because they can take their time, they have all night. Sure, most the fantasies are about Kara nailing her to the wall and fucking her until she can’t walk, but this perhaps leaves her knees even weaker, this exploration of each other’s bodies like learning a new language, archiving and documenting every inch.

They can take their time. 

That takes a moment to sink in, to really register. Lena’s not running, there is no countdown, no impending doom around the corner. This is just her and Kara, the strokes of skin sloping against skin, a soft flurry of tender care and no one can take this from her.

“Kara.”

“Yeah, babe?” Kara’s head lolls forward, her hair cascading over her front as she meets Lena’s eyes.

The pet name falls so seamlessly, so easily from Kara’s mouth, and Lena preens under its glorious weight. 

“Kiss me again,” Lena sighs, practically a whine.

Kara doesn’t even answer her, doesn’t hesitate to bend back down and immediately find Lena’s mouth, her breath coming in short, hot pants.

Lena winds her arms around Kara’s neck, pulls Kara’s bare body back up against her. Kara gasps when there’s the wet slip of her clit dragging down Lena’s midsection, the way it rubs over her skin, and Lena’s not even sure who’s moan she tastes in her mouth at this point, and suddenly it's not enough. Of course it’s sexy as hell for their bodies to work together like this without their hands, but out of nowhere bursts a primal need in Lena to know more, feel more. 

She’s painfully turned on, and Kara hasn’t even laid a hand on her. She keens into Kara’s body as she sucks on Kara’s bottom lip, wondering if she can translate through the heat of her tongue how badly she needs to be touched but also how eager she is to make this last as long as it can. Kara responds easily, her mouth opening for her and Lena wants to inhale all of her, to never breathe anything again but Kara’s steaming breath.

It starts with a nudge up against Kara’s shoulder with her own, and then she’s pushing the blonde onto her back and swinging herself over her. Kara’s too twisted in her desire and distracted by lust to stop her, she flops back against the mattress, and her dumbfounded gaze up at Lena is mesmerized.

“So, can I taste you now?” Lena asks coolly, her hands already rolling over Kara’s chest, gentle squeezes under the swells of her breasts, just a bare brush over her stiff nipples.

Kara sighs and squirms beneath her. “Why do you have to say stuff like that?”

“Because I want to see if it’s as good as I imagine. Please?”

Lena smiles at the strangled noise Kara makes, and she leans down into her neck, grazes her teeth over her pulse point. Kara’s throat bobs beneath her lips, her breaths growing shorter as Lena starts to suck in patches of her skin, not hard enough to bruise but far too light for how she really wants to paint her with an everlasting evidence of this night.

“You, um, you imagine this a lot?” Kara asks in a squeak, her hands sloping over Lena’s backside.

Lena nods even though Kara can’t exactly see her, and she slides down Kara’s body, leaving wet kisses down the center of her chest, over her soft breasts. Her hands wander up and down Kara’s sides, mapping out the muscles and tendons, figuring out where the goosebumps rise strongest, where Kara’s most sensitive, before settling again around Kara’s chest and skimming over hard, shivering nipples.

“Sometimes, now and then,” Lena murmurs as she presses gentle, soft kisses across her sternum. “But to be honest, usually I’m thinking about you going down on me.”

Kara groans as Lena closes her lips around a nipple, swirling her tongue slowly around it but never quite over it.

“Really?” Kara coughs, inhales sharply between her nose and Lena feels a hand tangle into her hair, cradling the back of her head and holding her against Kara’s chest.

Lena laughs and nods again. “Mhm. You have nice lips, seem like you’d be really good at it.”

“I would be. I mean, I am, I—”

Lena suddenly sucks her in hard, pinches the other between her fingers, and Kara jolts beneath her, gasps electrically, and Lena is beginning to wish that she’d had better foresight in taking her panties off first.

“Your tongue is also ridiculously long, if you haven’t noticed.” Lena trails lower over Kara’s abdomen, leaving her hands to massage over Kara’s deliciously hot skin as she kisses gently above Kara’s belly button. “I’ve thought about it inside me, how your face would look between my legs. How good you’d look on your knees for me.”

Kara’s hips are twitching by the time Lena makes it that low, just over the black elastic of her briefs, and Lena can smell her thick heat now, can feel the warmth of her wetness through the cloth.

Lena readjusts so she can slide down the bed and lie between Kara’s legs more easily, her hands dropping to roam over her muscular thighs, squeezing close to the crease of her pelvis before she hooks them loosely under the lip of her underwear.

“I also think about you touching me. Sometimes when I’m at work, or in a meeting, I’d imagine where your hands would be if you were there.”

“Where?” Kara immediately breathes out, and Lena glances up with a smirk only to find the blonde staring resolutely at the ceiling.

Lena bites down on her hip, hard, until Kara jerks and looks down, meets her eyes. Kara’s eyes are heavy and dark, no longer wet with pained reluctance but now shadowed with a sweltering greed.

“If it’s at work, just on my leg, my thigh under the table. Sometimes I’m wearing a dress, I’ll wonder how far you’d be willing to go, if you’d want to.” Lena pulls the waistband down, slowly, presses stray, soft kisses to every inch of new skin revealed.

“And if it’s not at work?” Kara breathes out, lifting her hips for Lena.

Lena smirks, pulling the undergarment down over her legs. “If we’re at Roulette, to be honest I usually just think about your hands on my ass, who would notice.” She sighs suddenly, presses her cheek to the inside of her thigh so that her breath laps against Kara’s bare center. “God, Kara, I seriously have dreams about you grabbing my ass.” 

She can feel the slight jostle of sheets as Kara digs her head back and groans, quiet, restrained, and all Lena wants is to push her over the edge.

“What if it’s just us?”

Lena lifts an eyebrow, her hands kneading the underside of Kara’s strong thighs, her thumbs straying just close to where Kara wants them — to where Lena herself wants to put them, but she holds out.

“If we’re alone.” Lena presses her lips to just the delicate, swollen edge of Kara’s folds, and Kara whimpers. “Everywhere, really. I want you to touch me everywhere.”

Just as she moves to press her mouth over her, to give her everything, all too suddenly Kara’s scrambling down and grabbing her arms, flipping Lena this time onto her backside with a startling display of strength.

Kara’s expression is hard, sharp as she climbs back over her. 

“What are you doing?” Lena asks breathlessly.

“I changed my mind.”

She swallows thickly, moves to sit up. “Oh, yeah th-that’s, that’s completely fine, we can stop, we can—”

“No, Lee.” Kara interrupts, pushing her back down, pinning her wrists over her head in a swift move that makes her shoulders stretch, leaves her dizzy with desire. Kara’s voice is deep like Lena’s never heard, gravelly and cocky just inches from her mouth. “I’m gonna fuck you first. Okay?”

The heat that splashes over Lena like hot water is riveting, like a blush soaking up her chest and over her face, Lena thinks she could come just from that dangerous tone alone, humid and crisp in her ear. And perhaps she realizes now that she loves how Kara never swears in regular conversation, because hearing it now for the first time, oh, it sends a thrill down her spine, and she keens into Kara’s coarse touch, the rough way she handles her. 

With one hand crawling between Lena’s legs, her fingers cupping over the damp center of her panties, the other still holding her wrists above her head, and Kara’s mouth close against Lena’s ear, she asks, her voice husky and hot and _ drowning _, “So, these dreams of yours. How many of my fingers can you take?”

And Lena’s too far gone to think about much of anything else after that.

xx

Pale trickles of orange are seeping across the skyline by the time they’re finished, by the time Lena’s shed off the gasping aftermath of another orgasm and has steadied her spinning vision. The nerve endings of her skin still palpitate with sensitivity, almost aftershocks of pleasure, but her eyelids have never been so heavy in her life as she turns over onto Kara. Kara’s still a bit sticky with sweat, still starry eyed and staring blankly at the ceiling, but she doesn’t object as Lena curls under her arm and crawls into her side. She opens up her shoulder, urges Lena closer, and her arm wraps around Lena’s bare backside and cradles her tight. 

Lena hums contentedly as she nudges her head under Kara’s chin and tucks a leg over the bartender, knowing full well she’s probably cuddling way too much right now for how much sex they just had. But she also knows that Kara would push her off if she really wanted. Maybe.

“Hey.” Kara’s fingers skim tiredly over Lena’s lower back. “Remember when I said we had to wait to do that until everyone left?”

Lena giggles into Kara’s neck, a smile blooming over her face, and Kara laughs beneath her.

“Yes. I also remember kissing you with cheese still in your mouth.”

“Okay, that’s totally your fault. You could’ve given me a heads up.”

If Lena’s eyes were open she’d be rolling them, but she settles for squeezing Kara’s waist. “Don’t even pretend you were surprised.”

She feels Kara lift her head, and Lena tilts back her own to meet her incredulous gaze. 

“Are you kidding me? I’ve never been more caught off guard in my life. And that’s including the time I accidentally ate two of Lucy’s special brownies before work.”

Lena snorts this time, buries her grin and shakes her head. “You can’t be serious, you must have known this was coming. Do you think I’m just this affectionate with all my friends? Let them sleep in my bed, stay awake until four in the morning to let them in?”

“I mean, I dunno what you and Sam get up to.” Lena pinches her and Kara just laughs. “I don’t know what you want me to say! I just didn’t think you’d, I mean, like _ actually _… you know.”

Lena shifts to see her face better, drags her fingers over Kara’s collarbones. “Actually what? Like you?”

Kara’s throat bobs with a swallow, and she chuckles dryly. “No, I mean, I hoped you did. But even if you did, I don’t know… I just, I wasn’t sure if you’d ever want this. Like, enough to do something about it.”

“Kara this is exactly why I’m always calling you an idiot.”

She laughs, loud and unweighted, and Lena feels the vibration through her entire body. It makes her impossibly warm, her glee is infectious, and she feels like she’s drunk with how happy she is right now.

“So you do, huh?” Kara’s eyes are round and whole, doting and endeared, as she finds Lena’s gaze as easily as one finds the sun. “You like me?”

Something quakes under Lena’s tongue, churns in her throat. Like it’s ready, like it’s broiling the roof of her mouth, like it’s desperate to come out. She’s been ready to say it for longer than she’d care to admit, and it’s still too suffocating to say. She wants to, she wants to, but— 

“Of course, you dork.” Lena smiles, laying her head back down to Kara’s chest. “Of course I like you.”

Kara’s hand is soothing in its strokes over her back, feather-light and gentle. “Cool. I like you too.”

Lena’s exhausted from the last three hours, a deep bone-tired she’s never known, but she’s also still too wired to sleep quite yet, and she thinks Kara might feel the same. They just drift into the quiet, Kara’s caresses languid and slow and Lena’s breath steady against the soft skin of Kara’s neck.

She can hear Kara’s heartbeat finally slowing, her breathing evening out as if she’s almost asleep, when something occurs to her.

“Kara?”

The blonde mumbles something incoherent. 

“What’s that drink called?”

“Mm. What drink?”

“The one you always make me.” Lena draws circles over Kara’s stomach with her finger, slow, tired.

“Oh, um… it’s kind of a twist on a Manhattan, I guess.”

“But what is it?”

Kara’s breath is soft against her forehead, dreamy. “It’s called a National Love Story.”

Enough light to fill a canyon swells in Lena’s throat. “And you don’t like it?”

“No, I never really liked whiskey. But I’ve always thought it was pretty. Elegant. I thought you might like it.”

Lena’s electric energy settles, finally, dissipates. “I do. I really do.”

She dreams of sun-drenched skies, of a fall that doesn’t hit the ground.

xx

It’s only mere hours late that Lena is stirred awake, and at first it’s not clear why she’s even groggily blinking her eyes open, what’s woken her. She twists around in the sheets and burrows into her pillow until she can make out the tell-tale vibrations of her phone, muffled but insistent.

By the time she finds it, stretching over the edge of the bed for her clutch on the floor, she’s less than pleased to see Sam’s blurry face on her screen.

“The fuck do you want?” she grumbles, rolling onto her back. Beside her, Kara makes a cute huff in her sleep, and she turns over so her tanned back is to Lena.

Sam’s booming voice in her ear is disorienting. _ “Oh my god, holy shit, you have to tell me everything, oh my god, please tell me you got laid. Did you get laid? Why are you so grumpy if you got laid? Oh my god, tell me everything.” _

“Please, talk quieter, I’m begging you. What— what time is it?”

_ “It’s nine, I wanted to let you sleep in a little.” _

“Christ Sam, can we talk later? I went to bed like three hours ago.”

_ “No, I have to pick up Ruby in less than two hours, and I don’t want her to hear all the filthy details. But I do. I want to hear all of them. So are you on your way yet?” _

Lena huffs, pouting. She’s not going back to sleep, is she? 

“You have so much fucking energy for how much you drank last night,” she says quietly as she crawls out of bed, careful not to wake Kara. “What time did you even get home?”

_ “I just came in. I paid the babysitter to stay overnight.” _

Lena pauses in the bathroom, midway to closing the door. “You mean… you stayed over?”

_ “I’m telling you, Luthor. We have a lot to talk about. What’s your ETA?” _

Lena rubs at her crusted, bleary eyes, exhales defeatedly. “Give me half an hour. You better have coffee ready.”

_ “Of course, my sweet angel, anything for you.” _

Lena rolls her eyes as she hangs up.

xx

The last thing she wants is to leave Kara behind in her bed, especially a naked, snoring one with a hickey under her jaw and deliciously pink, parted lips, but Lena does. She presses a kiss to Kara’s messy hair, and the blonde makes a soft sound under her touch but otherwise doesn’t stir again. 

She leaves a note on the nightstand beside her, along with a glass of water, and heads for Sam’s.

She’s later than she said she would be, and Sam texts her incessantly to hurry up in the car ride over, and Lena’s torn between fatigued irritation and fond amusement with her friend by the time she makes it to her house. Sam swings open the door before Lena’s even made it up to the porch, and she looks more radiant and excited than Lena’s seen her in years.

“I honestly don’t know whether I want to tell you about my night or hear about yours, they’re both pressing matters and I have a feeling I’m going to be thrilled either way.”

Lena winces as Sam crushes her in a hug, and she closes the door behind her. “How about you go first while I drink my coffee?”

“Deal.”

Sam guides Lena into the kitchen like she’s elderly, ushers her into a stool at the breakfast bar. Lena;s barely even blinked before a steaming cup of coffee is placed in front of her, and she inhales the bitter, roasted aroma eagerly, curling her fingers around the mug.

She expects Sam to sit with her, but Sam’s practically bouncing off the walls and she instead paces around the kitchen.

She waves flippantly. “Okay, go.”

“So, first of all, I’d like to preface that Alex is better with a strap-on than literally any person with a dick I’ve ever fucked in my life, oh my _ god _ I’m still sore.”

Lena snorts her hot coffee.

Sputtering, Lena wipes her chin and takes a proffered napkin thankfully. “Um, I think I need you to back up. Like a lot.”

Sam bites on her lip like a pining teenager, her grin splitting across her face with childlike elation. She pours into the details of last night, starting with them arriving at the party and Lena immediately splitting off into Kara’s arms. In retrospect, Lena maybe should have done a better job at introducing Sam into the mix of Kara’s friends, but in her defense she had met Lucy and a couple others at Roulette the few times Lena had brought her already.

After the bobbing for apples mess, while Kara and Lena were doing god even knows what, Sam got to talking with Lucy, who got her talking to Kelly, who then introduced her to Alex. One thing led to another, and then Alex’s dry sense of humor and laid back demeanor had Sam enraptured (Sam’s words, not Lena’s). They bonded over Kara and Lena’s behaviors, how blind and foolish they both were being — at this, Lena raises an eyebrow but Sam ignores her — and somehow the conversation with Ruby eventually surfaced. And after the cornhole tournament, they spent nearly half an hour scrolling through photos on Sam’s phone, everything from Ruby’s infant days, a picture of Sam in her cap and gown with just a small, pudgy baby in her arms, all the way up to Ruby’s first soccer game and mud-tracked cheeks, grass-stained knees. Alex was entertained and charmed, completely endeared with the photos. The couple times that Sam apologized for going off on a tangent about her daughter, shaking her head and trying to steer the topic to something more interesting for the other woman, Alex balked and insisted keep going. And then, as the party went on, while Lena was probably jumping on Kara’s shoulders or dancing like she had any rhythm, Sam and Alex stayed in their corner of the roof, sharing stories of their lives, getting to know each other.

“Lena, I can’t remember the last time someone actually just… like,” Sam flounders, shaking her head. “Most people just ask this stuff because it’s what you do, right? You’re supposed to ask, it’s polite, but she just seemed like she really wanted to know _ me _, you get what I’m saying?”

Lips pursed into an amused smile, chin in hand, Lena laughs. “Yeah, love, I do.”

“And then you came up, and we talked, and then you went all Cameron Díaz off to find your woman, and then—” Sam smirks, chuckles. “Alex actually kept asking me where you two went, and she almost went to go and find you before midnight, so you’re welcome, I talked her out of it.”

Lena widens her eyes mockingly. “Oh, my hero.”

“Yeah, you bet. Anyway, so I actually thought her and that girl Kelly were a thing, right? They seemed pretty friendly, but apparently they’re just exes and are good friends now, supposedly? I’m not sure what happened there. And I was like, cool, but secretly I was celebrating because, well, that’s awesome for me.”

“Really hit the jackpot there, huh.”

“So it hits midnight, and oh — you really missed a show actually, it was so beautiful Lena. There were fireworks over the city and that guy Winn, him and Lucy shot a confetti cannon and it just, it was a little surreal. Our connection was magical and there was all this color and music everywhere, and while everyone else was popping the champagne bottles, I was just standing with Alex, and I didn’t know what to say because there was _ no way _ I was kissing this girl, we just met. But then she — and I seriously cannot make this up, so don’t even try me — she caught a piece of the confetti, plucked it right out of the air, and she just smiled and handed it to me and was like, _ here, this is for you.” _ Sam sighs wistfully, finally stopping in her pacing and leaning against the breakfast bar. “It was so, so cute, you have no fucking idea.”

Lena actually does soften at that, and she laughs at how starry-eyed Sam is. “Okay, and what happened after I left?”

Sam wiggles her eyebrows, and Lena grimaces. “So the party was actually still going on until four, and honestly we just kept talking. She told me about her and Kara growing up and living together now, and she mentioned she’d been away for a few weeks, but when I asked where she went, she didn’t seem like she wanted to talk about it. But yeah, so, around four though, she started getting _ really _ sweet, like I’m talking smooth ass moves you couldn't even dream of. You should take note, Luthor.”

“My moves work fine, thanks.”

“Yeah, sure.” Sam takes a heaving breath, recenters herself. “And I was great at flirting back, obviously, I was doing fantastic. And then, seriously I was working myself up to just ask her for her number and maybe even a date, but then she just asked me, point blank — _ would it be out of line if I kissed you right now? _”

Lena purses her lips, thinking about how she approached Kara with a hundred questions, and shrugs. “Okay, maybe she is a little smoother than me.”

“Told you. And obviously I said no, it wouldn’t be at all, but I was like, all your friends are still here, and so she asked if I’d rather that they weren’t. I was like, what? And she just asked me if I wanted them to leave. And I asked her what we would do if they all left, and she was all, _ whatever you want, _ in this really fucking sexy voice, and so I said yeah, kick everybody out. So she did.”

Lena’s hand falls to the counter beside her coffee. “No she did not, you’re lying.”

Sam scoffs with an incredulous grin. “She did! I’m not kidding. She whistled, like fucking _ whistled, _ and told everyone the party was over and to go home. And so they did.”

“You know I told Kara to do that, and she said I was just going to have to wait?”

Sam cackles, claps her hands. “So, I definitely got the better one then.”

“Hey.” Lena holds out a finger. “Watch it.”

Sam holds her hands up defensively with a cocky smirk. “Alright, defend your girl, I get it.”

“Okay, so then what happened?”

“What do you think happened? We fucked, Lena. She fucked the life out of me. I’ve never been fucked like that in my life, I almost begged her this morning to do it again.”

Lena snickers. “What stopped you?”

Sam gives Lena a mischievous, droll sort of smile, and she crosses her arms. “Because someone else owes me some details. Also she was still sleeping when I left. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“For…?”

“Uh, hello, I’m the one that talked some sense into you. I am single-handedly responsible for keeping your love life afloat and moving.”

Lena raises an eyebrow, and Sam huffs.

“Okay, whatever, don’t thank me. So, how was the sex? What’s she like in bed? Did she do anything freaky?”

Lena finishes off the last sips of her coffee and rises to fetch more. “Yes, okay, we had sex. But I’m not telling you about it.”

Sam whines. “Oh come on, why not?”

“Because you are way too invested in my sex life, Sam, it’s concerning.”

Sam whacks her with a kitchen towel, and Lena just barely avoids spilling her fresh cup of coffee. She snatches the rag back and makes back to her seat. 

“Okay, look, it was wonderful. It was… amazing, honestly. Life-changing.” Lena sighs as she sinks into the chair, remembering the way Kara’s sturdy hands grabbed and worked at her skin, her hot, gasping moans into Lena’s mouth as she was three-knuckles deep into her, the red scratches she left down the blonde’s back.

“Do you need a cold shower or something?”

Lena blinks her eyes back down to Sam’s skeptical frown. “Oh, shut up. It was wonderful, yes, it was everything I’d imagined and more, but…”

Sam immediately looks concerned. “But? There’s a but? Why’s there a but? There shouldn’t be a but.”

“No no, not a bad but.” Lena bites the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. “I just, I spent so much time being afraid of how I felt for her, of what was going on in her head, whether she felt the same or whether this was all just a game to her.”

An article, a lie, the truth, was it all one in the same?

“I was torturing myself, refusing to let anything happen between us, delaying any possibility of it and ultimately existing in this miserable purgatory, because apparently that was easier than facing the chance that… that she…”

“That she didn’t like you back?”

That Kara was using her, that none of it meant anything from the start, that this was all a mistake and Lena never should have trusted her in the first place.

“Yeah, I suppose. That she didn’t care about me, not like how I care about her, and that maybe I wasn’t being paranoid in thinking I might not ever be deserving of someone like her. That maybe there was a catch. But now?” Lena laughs softly. “I don’t know. Maybe I can have it all.”

Sam smiles tenderly, and she reaches across the bar to take Lena’s hand. “Yeah, you big dummy, you really can. I’m glad she makes you happy, ‘cause I like her.”

Lena laughs wetly, her heart overflowing. “You do?”

“I mean, she’s a bit nerdy for my taste, but she’s hot. And most of all, she’s sweet.” Sam smiles, glancing up somewhere behind Lena. “I remember back in college, some of the girls you’d go out with, bring home. None of them lasted very long, you were too focused for anything serious. But then you brought Siobhan over, and she kept coming back, and you were happy. You seemed it, anyway. And I was happy for you, obviously, you’re my best friend. It was nice to see you doing something for yourself for once. But I never understood what you saw in her.”

Lena rolls her eyes. “Yes, yes, I know you don’t like her.”

“No, I mean — yes that’s true, but I didn’t like her for _ you. _ She was nice enough, pretty, talented, smart. She cared about you from what I could tell, she liked being around you. You two were cute together, you looked good on those magazine covers. But I just always had this vague idea in my head of who you’d end up with someday, of a person that actually deserved you. I didn’t think someone like that existed, I thought my standards were too high, nobody really measured up. You have the biggest heart in the world, Lena, and because of that I always thought that no matter who you chose, you’d be settling.”

Lena swallows thickly, forcing the sappy sting of tears behind her eyes away. “I really hope there’s a but coming.”

Sam chuckles. “Okay listen, I don’t know her super well, I’m definitely gonna need to suss-out the field a bit more, _ but _ if anyone could measure up to my insane bar, I don’t know, I think it’s her.”

Lena ducks her chin and laughs, embarrassed at the swell of emotion, and she wipes at her tired eyes. “Thank you, Sam. You don’t know how much that means to me.”

Sam shrugs, winks. “Think I have an idea. Wanna come with me to pick up Ruby? Told her we’d go see that new Dora movie.”

She can’t wait to crawl back into bed with Kara, it’s a palpable itch to poke back under her arm and snuggle into her chest and sleep the day away. But looking at her smiling best friend across from her, the circles under her eyes from a late night, well. 

Kara can wait, because she’s not going anywhere, and they can take their time.

xx

When she makes it out of the movie and they’re all climbing into Sam’s car, it’s just after one, and she goes to power her phone back only to realize it died after not being charged the night before.

“Hey, you mind if I plug my phone in?” 

“Sure.” Sam leans over the center console, reaches for the pocket behind Lena’s seat, and returns with a wire she hands over. “You want me to drive you home? I still can’t believe you left her like that.”

Plugging her phone in, Lena scoffs. “Oh, don’t even start with me, you should have heard yourself this morning. You were so excited to gossip you would have come over yourself if I didn’t leave.”

Before Sam can respond, Ruby pipes up from the backseat. “What gossip?”

Lena chuckles as Sam makes hesitant eye contact with her daughter in the rearview mirror. “Your Auntie Lena has a special new friend, and I needed to… um, make sure that she’s nice enough. For Auntie Lena.”

“Oh. Is she?”

Sam and Lena share a sweet, knowing smile, and Lena’s the one to turn back and answer. 

“Yes, darling, she’s very nice.” Lowering her voice conspiratorially, Lena covers her mouth as if to be hiding from Sam. “Her sister is _ really _ nice too, whole lot nicer than your mom.”

Sam smacks her on the shoulder, and Lena laughs as she squeezes back into her seat, but Ruby’s having none of it. 

“Hey! You said hitting was illegal.”

Lena snickers as Sam sighs exhaustedly, slumping over the steering wheel. “Yes, yes it is. Please don’t turn me in.”

Ruby huffs. “I’ll think about it.”

“Careful,” Lena remarks dryly as her phone boots back up. “Criminal mothers make perfect grounds for emancipation.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Once her phone’s back to life and she turns the sound on, notifications ping in rapid succession, and Lena smirks. Six missed calls from Kara, fourteen text messages. 

** _why’d u leave :(_ **

** _i miss u_ **

** _i was very comfy and now im not. are u returning anytime soon?_ **

** _lena there is NO food here, this is not cool_ **

** _not. cool._ **

** _hey, can u call me back when u get a chance?_ **

** _when are u coming back?_ **

** _sorry i know im spamming your phone right now but i really need to talk to you_ **

** _you said we could talk later_ **

** _it’s later_ **

** _please please please please answer ur phone_ **

** _lena this is really important please just call me _ **

** _please pick up_ **

** _lena please call me back_ **

“Jeez Louise, is that girl okay?” 

They’re at a red light and Sam’s leaning over to look at Lena’s phone screen. Lena raises an eyebrow at the PG expletive, but her friend just jabs her in the ribs and pulls back into her own seat.

“She’s fine. I told her last night we could talk about things today, so she probably just woke up and panicked that I was gone.” It’s cute, honestly, how panicked and eager Kara is to clear the air between them, and Lena’s a bit relieved that she found out already on her own. It feels safer, somehow. It makes last night seem so much more… real.

Lena types out a quick text to Kara.

_ Sorry darling my phone died. I’ll be home soon, are you still at mine? _

Sam snorts. “To be fair, you do have a habit of bolting.”

“I do not!”

“Lena.”

“I have my avoidant tactics, yes. But I always come back.”

“Mhm, sure.”

Lena’s phone vibrates twice.

** _yes_ **

** _how far are you?_ **

Lena smiles at the idea of coming home to an insistent, needy Kara, of probably finding her kitchen turned upside down in her quest for food, of Kara wandering the empty apartment and texting Lena incessantly with boredom. What had once been a pipe-dream fantasy, Kara with bed head and half-naked, pantsless, is now a reality, and she bites down on her bottom lip as she texts back that she’s only twenty minutes away.

“You really are such a love-sick teenager,” Sam remarks in disgust, shaking her head. “Can’t believe I’ve been dealing with this for two months already. Three?”

It slams against her chest like a freight train.

Lena drops her phone into her lap, her jaw hanging. “Oh my god.”

“What?”

“Oh my _ god.” _

Sam swivels in her seat, looking at Lena in alarm. “Oh my god, _ what?” _ Even Ruby struggles against her seatbelt to lean forward. 

Lena just stares forward out the windshield breathlessly. “Sam, oh my god. I… I think I’m in love with her.”

There’s a moment of quiet, just Lena’s thumping heart and the syrupy relief of the admission flooding through her veins, the delirious spin of a euphoric revelation, of an unweighted truth, of blurting it out into Sam’s maroon Subaru Outback with a Winnie the Pooh pendant hanging from the rearview mirror and a seven-year-old in the back seat.

“Dude. You’re just figuring this out now?”

“Who does she love?”

“Her special friend, baby. Put your seat belt back on.”

“Mommy, you’re my special friend.”

“You’re my special friend too, sweetie, now put that seat belt back on or I’m stopping the car.”

“Oh my god.” Lena breaks into a grin as brilliant as the glow inside her. “Sam, I have to tell her.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll be there soon. Keep it in your pants.”

“What does she have in her pants?”

“Her wallet, monkey girl.”

It’s not soon enough, Lena feels as elated and antsy as she had been powering down Kara’s stairwell, she still has half a mind to dial Kara’s number and blurt it over the phone. But eventually the street signs they pass by are narrowing to her block, she knows they’re close, and this keeps her waiting, just barely, something slightly resemblant of patient.

Sam pulls into the driveway entrance of the building, and Lena barely manages a goodbye, throwing a kiss over her shoulder to Ruby as she scrambles out of the car and rushes into the lobby, waving off Sam’s call of good luck.

Because she doesn’t need luck, no, not at all. Not today.

When she makes it up to her apartment, slips her key in the lock, twists the metal and pushes the door open, Kara’s on the couch staring at her phone intently. She immediately jumps to her feet as Lena enters, and Lena’s heart is hammering, giddy with affection and joy and pure, utter respect for this incredible woman in front of her.

But Lena frowns. “You put your pants back on.”

Kara glances down at herself in confusion, and back at Lena. “What? Yeah, was I not supposed to? Look, never mind that, I—”

“Yes, actually, you were supposed to stay pantsless. This was all apart of my fantasy, I had it all mapped out, Kara, and you’ve ruined it.”

Kara sighs, steps closer to Lena. “Okay, I’m sorry, but listen—”

“You know what, it’s fine.” Lena drops her bag onto the counter unceremoniously, runs a hand through her hair. “I can live with the pants, I’ll improvise.”

Lena finally sees how stricken and on edge Kara looks, the tautness of her neck and the fret in her eyes. Lena softens, she breathes out serenely, and then laughs, because it is rather funny to think how twisted around this has all become.

At first, there was Lena, terrified in the face of Kara’s purity, that she’d hate her for her family, for who she is, how desperate she was to hide her secret for as long as she could. Then she found out Kara knew all along, and it never made a difference what her last name was, Kara cherished and cared for her all the same. She showed up at Lena’s door with brown paper bags of takeout, she let Lena inside her home with open arms, she made Lena beautiful amber drinks named after love and she built houses of cards on her dining table, she made Lena laugh when she thought she’d forgotten how. 

And now, Kara stands frozen in fear of telling Lena a truth she already knows.

Maybe there was always going to be a perfect moment.

Kara blinks bewilderedly, shakes her head. “Improvise… what? No, wait, stop, Lena, I really—”

“I know about the article.”

Kara, eyes ashen, delicate, exhales with wavering, breathless fragility. “You… you what?”

Is this what it feels like? To breathe again, clean crisp air, a freefall into clarity?

“I know you know who I am, and I know you’re the one who outed the truth about the Neoremedium, outed Lex for his crimes. I know everything.”

Kara stares back at Lena in staggered shock, skin pale like marble.

Lena shakes her head. “And at first I was… God, I was horrified when I found out. I was confused, terrified, and honestly I was _ angry. _ I thought I might’ve even hated you, maybe for a minute, I didn’t know what to feel at first. I was feeling everything, and nothing fit together in this insane, elaborate web I was trying to piece together. But it wasn’t until I stopped trying to make it all fit, when I looked at you and the way you’ve always been with me, honest and open and kind… it wasn’t until then that I finally understood. Because I get it now, I understand. It’s okay. 

“Kara, you made me feel normal and — and special, when I felt like the most disgraced, ostracized person in the world. And yes, you knew all along who I was and you didn’t tell me, and that was confusing and frustrating, it didn’t make any sense and I thought I would go insane. But you also gave me something else that was so, so priceless.” 

Lena licks her lips, and she’s smiling now, because everything she was so scared of seems like nothing now, like dust, like fragments of someone else’s torment, gone, yesterday. 

“Because I’m in love with you, Kara, of course I am. I’m stupidly and illogically in love with you, and I think maybe I have been for an embarrassing amount of time now. But that’s not even the point. Because while I was falling for you I — I was falling for myself too, I think. You forced me to see how I’m so much more than my family, more than just someone else’s shadow, how I’m someone all on my own without a title that was never mine. You didn’t just make me feel loved, you reminded me how to love myself too. When I’d forgotten how, when I didn’t think it was possible to anymore.”

Lena, beaming, laughs breathlessly because yes, Sam was right. It _ is _ laughable that she’s only just figuring this out, but now that she has, now that she’s opened the rusted vaults of her chest to let out this celestial sunshine Kara’s inspired in of her, she doesn’t want to put it back. 

“And Kara, I don’t know how I could ever possibly thank you enough for that, except to just love you in every way I can, for however long you’ll have me.”

A tear begins to roll down Kara’s cheek, first one, and then another across the other cheek, and Lena puffs another laugh, reaches out to brush them away. 

“Don’t cry, darling, I’m sorry, I know that was incredibly cheesy. But I needed you to know that it’s okay. I understand why you did what you did, and it’s okay.”

Kara flinches away from Lena’s touch.

And then she blurts it out like acid, like a sonic boom, like devastation.

“I wrote an article for CatCo.”

Lena blinks, hesitates. “I know? That’s what I just said, I —”

“No, Lena.” Kara shakes her head, her lower lip wobbling as she takes a staggering step backwards. “This one it’s not about your brother it’s… it’s about you.”

This is the ground of reality. Here, she’s found it.

Her blood runs cold, frosts over, a subarctic chill in her chest. 

The tears are coming faster now, leaking down Kara’s cheeks like drainage as she sputters out her words frantically, and Lena’s lips are tingling like they belong to someone else.

“Before — before you came to National City,” Kara starts in a rush of words that trip over one another, sloppy and uncoordinated. ”They asked me, and a bunch of other people, but they picked me and I-I wrote an article about you and everything you’ve done since coming here and about your life, CatCo asked me to find you and write the story and I wrote it and it’s going live in five days.”

There’s only static in her ears as Kara’s mouth moves, but the words fall out like air conditioning and Lena can barely hear it.

She just stares back at Kara, left only with a crumbling, volatile dread.

“But Lena you have to believe me, I — I changed my mind, I begged her not to do it, I tried to take it back, I didn’t know last night that she would still go through with it, and I’m gonna talk to her again but I had to tell you, I couldn’t keep lying to you and I’m so sorry, please, you have to understand, I changed my mind as soon as I realized that I—”

“Stop.” 

Lena’s breath falls into the stillness between them, faint, just a fragrance of quiet.

“Just… stop talking.”

Kara recoils as if Lena’s slapped her, she sucks in her quivering breath, her entire body is shaking. Kara’s eyes waver back and forth between hers, distraught, over her face and she makes no move to wipe away the messy scatter of tears, only a textbook figure of guilt and twisted shame as she watches Lena.

Look away. Please, look away.

There’s a freezer-burn taste left on her tongue, dry, just a stain, this is only an evanescent imprint of sorrow.

Lena expected more than this. Before, when she contemplated whether Kara had an angle in meeting her, in making her laugh, in getting to know her, in sharing her life, in— 

It’s not quite the catastrophe she imagined it to be.

She expected relentless fury too immense to hold, nothing a fortress could contain, Lena would collapse under the unyielding frenzy. She expected shouting, foul sobs hiccuping from her throat like a tea kettle screaming, she expected the gods to come crashing down and ask about all this damn noise.

She never thought it’d be this quiet, a succumbing to apathy.

Lena stands in the foyer, only the muffled churn of traffic outside, the high-frequency hum of the lights, and Kara’s panting breath to remind her this is real.

Lena closes her parted mouth, she blinks down to the floor.

“Get out,” she says.

This is heartbreak, and this is all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is this a bad time to say that i have finals and project due dates coming up so you might have to wait a few weeks for an update


	12. right in front of me, where it wasn't supposed to be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i said fuck it here’s 20k+
> 
> tw: alcohol abuse, mentions of overdose, hospitalization

September 23rd, 2019 

“I don’t — I don’t understand.” Kara shakes her head, sucks in her bottom lip. “You said if I brought you a front page story, the job was mine. What else is there to consider?”

Andrea Rojas’s smile is a sticky red, elastic thing across her face. “Kara, sweetheart. It’s a little more complicated than that. There’s just simply many other people who are much more qualified for this job. We’re not sure yet is all.”

Anxiety like a sharp lash of fire ripples through Kara’s chest, leaves her with clenched fists and unsteady panic. “Okay, so when will you be sure? I’ve been counting on this for months, I spent nearly a year researching this project, I _ never _ would have picked—”

“I would choose what you say next in this room very carefully, Miss Danvers.” 

Andrea’s unwavering, calculating stare slits across Kara’s bravado like a razor blade.

She clamps her jaw shut.

Andrea breaks back into a smile like liquid. “Good, that’s better. Because we do have a proposition for you.”

❛❛ ❜❜

When Kara shoulders into the apartment later that day with an armful of groceries, an exhaustion like taut rope holding her together, she finds her sister lounged across the couch, feet kicked up over the edge.

Alex gives her a quick glance over the back cushions before turning back to the TV. “Sup.”

“Hey,” she responds softly. Kara drops the paper bags onto the kitchen island carefully, but she still manages to knock over a few stray empty takeout cartons and a couple seltzer cans. When one clambers to the floor, the hollow aluminum pangs against the hardwood jarring and loud, and Kara flinches.

At the noise, Alex glances over again, and then she’s quickly stumbling off the couch and rushing over. 

“Fuck, shit, I’m sorry, I know I promised I was gonna take care of the mess, I’ll do it now.”

“It’s fine.” Kara waves her off flippantly, grabs the trash can and starts clearing the debris of the kitchen. “It’s my week to clean anyway.”

“No, last week was your week.” Alex follows along behind her, tries to take the bin from her hands. “And you did the one before that too. Please, just let me—”

A whiff, a smell, all it takes is the barest of a hint and it’s easy to put it together.

Kara whirls back on her sister. “Are you serious? Already? It’s barely even one in the afternoon.”

Light the flick of a light, Alex takes a step back and an impasse shadows over her face. “What are you talking about?”

But Kara’s already shaking it off, this anger in her bones, because she hates the bitter taste of it. She rolls her shoulders, tries to dispel its grip like a shiver and she goes back to clearing the trash again. 

“Nothing, I’m sorry, never mind.”

“No, come on, don’t hold back on my account.” Alex’s tone is sour and challenge drips from it like gasoline. “What is it now? Please, tell me what else I’m doing wrong.”

Kara shakes her head, moves around into the living room to scoop up candy wrappers and empty chip bags. “It’s nothing, okay? I’m sorry. You’re at home, you can do whatever you want.”

“Jesus Christ, Kara, what are you always apologizing for?”

These come in rounds.

There’s the initial fight, the unsteady arguing that quakes like a tremble under the earth, that threatens to erupt even this family, but it’s only the beginning. It’s not the second part, the point of no return, where things have escalated beyond either of their control and the damage is cumbersome and harder to ignore.

It doesn’t usually get that far, things will stay in a gray middle ground between one and two, varying gradients of fighting. Kara’s become something of an expert at rewinding the trajectory, she can steer things back around, even if every time she never knows which way it will go. 

Alex trips as she comes after Kara, following like a storm. “Seriously, what the hell do you have to be sorry for? I know, okay? I know, I can’t do anything right, you’re always fixing my mistakes, I’m a screw-up, I _ get _it.”

Kara sets the bin down exasperatedly and turns back on her sister, takes her by the shoulders. “Please, Alex just stop — you’re not a screw-up, I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair of me. You have every right to be upset with me, but I didn’t mean anything by what I said.”

Alex shakes Kara off of her, immediately reels away back to the kitchen. “Can you stop talking to me like a child? Holy shit, you treat me like Mom did.”

Kara scrapes her hands back through her hair and rushes after her sister, tries to be appeasing but Alex is already opening the refrigerator door. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to, but please just don’t have any more—”

“Stop_ fucking _ apologizing!” Alex slams the fridge door back shut, a beer in hand.

This jolts Kara back, she flinches away, and she feels her heart hiccup in her chest. 

This is the fifty-fifty precipice.

It’s just a second. She’s not—

She’d never be _ afraid _ of her sister, no, it’s nothing like that, it’s just a certain reflex anyone would have at a loud sound, Kara’s always been sensitive like that, it’s not like that.

But Alex notices immediately, and her face twists with pungent regret. She exhales sharply, and she quickly sets the drink down onto the countertop. Alex presses the heels of her palms hard against her eyes as she takes a deep, steadying breath. 

“Fuck. Okay. Okay, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to start a fight. It was — it was just a few drinks. I’m fine, I’m not really drunk, I’m good. I’m sorry.”

The cool down, the escape, Alex disarms and Kara welcomes it every time with a clean slate.

Kara swallows, nods dumbly. “I know, it’s okay.”

Alex doesn’t look like she’s anywhere near believing Kara, but she takes another deep breath. And then she frowns. “Wait. Didn’t you have the CatCo thing? Was that today?”

Disappointment like sand lodges at the back of Kara’s throat, threatens to pull her under. 

She nods. “Yeah. It was this morning.”

“And? How’d it go?”

“Not… great.”

As Kara moves to start putting groceries away, Alex hops onto a bar stool, and Kara doesn’t miss the way she sways to one side as she does. 

“Why? Did you get the check at least?”

“Yeah, they paid me for the story.”

“So what’s the issue?” 

Kara closes a cupboard slowly, sucks in her bottom lip. “When Cat and I talked back in March, she told me Andrea would make a spot for me on their team after this. If I gave them a good enough story, the job was mine. But Andrea gave me a new assignment first.”

Alex scowls. “Seriously? How many national scandals does she think you’ve got up your sleeve?”

Kara shakes her head. “I dunno. It’s not like, just another story. It’s more of a fluff thing.”

“What, you’re gonna report on a wedding or something?”

“No, it’s…” Kara sighs. “I honestly don’t get it, she just wants a scoop. But she’s putting it out to a bunch of people, anyone that can bring it to her, like a contest or something.”

“And the reward is what, the job?”

“Pretty much.”

Alex sucks on her front row of teeth, contemplative, while a sloppy pressure builds behind Kara’s eyes.

“Well, that’s fine,” Alex says dismissively. “We can just wait. We’ll figure it out.”

“_ No, _Alex.” Kara exhales shakily, runs her hands through her hair in frustration. “Gosh, no, it’s not fine, this isn’t fine at all. She all but promised me the job when I first came to her, and now this? It’s—”

“Kara.”

Her eyes flicker back up at Alex, she blinks through her wet eyelashes. Alex looks so still and serene, even with the circles under her eyes, the pale hollowness to her cheeks, the grimy glean of her unwashed hair. Even still, she looks so strong when Kara is supposed to be the stable one right now, supposed to be the one taking care of them.

“It’s okay ‘cause it’s all we’ve got, alright? Rehab’s not going anywhere.” Alex smiles softly at Kara, offers an unwavering condolence Kara’s not sure she’s earned. “It can wait a little longer. We’ll work this out. I believe in you.”

Kara digs her fingernails into her palm, clenches her jaw, but she nods. 

Because who else is gonna believe in her?

October 6th 

They have a fight.

Kara’s not sure who starts it, if anyone really does. 

Normally these fizzle out like the rest, they end with Kara bowing out and Alex apologizing, or Kara will force them into a civil dinner until eventually someone caves and breaks the silence, admits they’re both being stupid. Or Alex will just sober up and they move past the thing like alcohol that passes through her bloodstream. Siblings fight, this is nothing new, they get over it.

Sometimes it’s instantaneous. One moment Alex is erupting and the next she’s completely fine, composed. That scares Kara more than anything, not always being able to tell when Alex has been drinking, the fact she can hide it so well when she wants to.

Normally Kara stays calm. Cool. Detached.

She has to, because she knows it’s not Alex snapping back at her, it’s not Alex with venom dripping from her teeth with every lashing retort, it’s not Alex slamming doors and snarling things at Kara.

Callous, spiteful things like: 

“You know, if you were really as fucking perfect as you think you are, maybe you would’ve actually started your career when you were supposed to, and then maybe Clark would still be here.”

They’re in the thick of it, their argument’s been going in circles for twenty minutes now, and Kara tries not to engage, she usually succeeds at that. There’s not a whole lot of logic behind the stuff she says anyway.

But it still shoves the air from her lungs, cracks the balance of her patient equilibrium.

It leaves her with something dark, ugly, writhing. A version of herself that she hates, a version she wants squash so far down it never sees the light of the sunrise.

But in this hour of twilight, it’s all she has.

“You’re gonna try and put that on _ me? _” Kara seethes down the hall as the blood rushes to her face. “That is so freaking rich. Why do you think I never did anything with my degree in the first place?”

Kara tears after Alex, follows her into her room to find her sister rummaging through dresser drawers. Pork Belly leaps off of Alex’s bed at the noise they’re making, scurries off between Kara’s legs and flees. Alex tosses her clothes onto the floor, her mouth curled down, unresponsive to Kara’s outburst, and that just fans Kara’s flames.

“You think I wanted to be a bartender for the rest of my life?” Kara’s entire frame quakes with the struggle to withhold her temper, to slow down the way her eyes are already stinging because she always cries when she’s angry and that just makes it so much worse. “I had the money, I had the savings and I had the opportunity to chase my dreams. But how could I, with you? You dropped out of school, Alex, you can’t hold a job to save your life, how was I supposed to leave you alone for even a second?”

“Yeah, we get it, you’re the God that could’ve saved the world if you didn’t have me as your baggage.” Alex shakes her head and scoffs, scoops out a small, plastic bottle of Jim Beam from the bottom drawer. “At least I have a life. Sure, maybe I ruin everything I touch, but at least I _ do _ shit, at least I’m living for something. What do you do all day, huh? Worry about me, pour some drinks? Yeah, real thrilling life you’ve got going on.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, which life is it that you’re referring to exactly?”

It spews out like the rotten heart in her chest.

“Is it the one where your fiancée left you at your rehearsal dinner because you were too wasted to say your vows? Or are we talking about the one where you lost Kelly? The professional psychiatrist with a degree in dealing with deadbeats but even she couldn’t stand to be around you anymore?”

She knows she hasn’t just touched a nerve, she’s torched its roots to ash. Alex levels her with a bristling look that rocks her to her core, but Kara’s past the point of breaking. They both are. 

She never knew her love for her sister could leave her so weak, so tired from the crippling rage, so busted_ . _

Before Alex can respond, Kara notices the time all of a sudden, and she hisses under her breath, stalks off back down the hall. 

“I have to go to work.”

“Are you kidding me?” Alex yells after her. “Yeah, fine Kara, walk away! Little miss sunshine, always proving what a selfish jackass you are and then running off like it never happened.”

Kara wipes her red eyes before Alex can notice, presses against them to keep the tears away as she shrugs on her coat. 

“Look, I’m sorry,” she starts as Alex follows her into the foyer, but it’s feeble, weak, she doesn’t know how to make it sound like she means it. “I shouldn’t have said those—”

“Right, say you’re sorry, go ahead.” Alex waves her hands boisterously. “Apologize and tell me how much you fucking love me and pretend like you don’t wish every day that I was someone else’s problem to deal with, that I’d just OD already and be out of your hair.”

Kara grabs her keys from the dish, tugs open the door harder than she means but if she doesn’t leave now she’s only going to say something worse. She’s already feeling volatile in her cruelty, uncertain in who she’s letting herself become. 

But it’s already coming, they’re already at their peak of casualty.

“Yeah, well I guess I’m just stuck with you until that happens, so. Don’t wait up for me.”

She slams the door.

❛❛ ❜❜

Twelve hours later, the possibility that that might be the last thing she ever says to her sister crashes against her chest like a wrecking ball.

“Hello? Hello? Nicole, hey, hi — is Alex with you? No? Can you just give me a call if you hear from her please?”

“Jake, hi — yes I know it’s late, I’m so so sorry, but have you heard from Alex at all tonight?”

“Brett, hi, it’s Kara, have you seen my sister? Are you sure? Has she been with Sarah? Can you ask?”

Pacing in an empty apartment, anxiety like a torrential downpour rattling the walls and shattering the windows, Kara can barely breathe long enough to get the words out for every phone call, can’t keep her fingers still enough to tap names on a screen. 

She got home from work two hours ago to find Alex gone. 

Alex, who’s not answering her phone. 

Alex, who’s not at any of the bars within a ten-block radius. 

Alex, who’s not with any of her friends. 

Alex, her life, her home.

She does get a call, eventually. It’s not the one she wants.

It is actually raining outside now, an unyielding storm, so when Kara bursts through the ER doors she’s drenched. Her sneakers squelch across the linoleum floors and her hair hangs in heavy, dripping heaps down her shoulders.

It’s been over a year since they’ve been here, since Kara’s signed this paperwork and filled out these forms, acknowledgements that she understands they don’t have health insurance, already agreeing on payment plans she knows they won’t be able to keep up with, already being shown the bills, the paperwork, the forms it’s all—

Alex. She just wants to see Alex.

Kara stands at the foot of her hospital bed. Her foot bounces, her fingers tap against her palm restlessly, she clicks her jaw. Alex looks so pale on those baby blue sheets, her skin so frail with an IV pumping fluids into her porcelain skin, her lips so white.

“I’m sorry, what?” Kara shakes away the fog, turns to the doctor standing next to her. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t— can you repeat that?”

His thin mouth sets low on his face, flat. “Your sister’s in a lot of pain, Miss Danvers.”

“Yeah, I know.” Kara sniffles, rubs at her mouth. “She always said that tube you stick down her throat leaves her sore for days.”

The doctor sighs, drops his gaze for just a moment before looking Kara head on again. Resolute, unshakeable. “This is her eighth visit in five years. A history like that… well. I’ve shown you her numbers.”

Kara shakes off his impenetrable stare, focuses on her sister.

So peaceful, soft, serene, she really is just asleep.

“Can you just tell me what it means, then?” she asks, her voice brittle like frost. “Please?”

“I’ve seen a lot of folks like her over my time, and I’ve never seen someone so young with liver enzymes this bad. Her body just can’t keep sustaining this kind of lifestyle anymore. I must strongly urge you both again to consider the rehabilitative services we discussed the last time.”

Kara’s lower lip quivers, and she ducks her chin, wipes her nose. “I know. We know. We’ve talked about it, getting her into a good program. We just, we’ve… I haven’t…” Kara shakes her head sharply, sucks in a deep gulp of breath because she can feel the bulge of heat behind her eyes.

“Your sister is in pain,” the doctor repeats quietly, gently. “I’m not just speaking about her physical state, but her mental health, her emotional wellbeing. She’s hurting. And you must understand that she cannot go on like this.”

When he leaves, finally, Kara stands still at the foot of Alex’s bed for a little while longer.

She never wanted to be the hero, the one on top. Alex was always the biggest person in the world to her. Kara always thought the infinity of the universe ended as far as Alex could reach, she was the strongest, kindest, most confident person she’s ever known. Alex taught her the meaning of family by nurture, not by blood.

She taught her what it meant to not feel abandoned, alone, misunderstood.

The world is a horrible, daunting, scary old place, one that left Kara cowering in the dark corners full of terror when she first appeared on their doorstep. Alex pulled her from that, Alex held out a hand, Alex is the one who turned on the lights.

They don’t have anyone else, there’s nobody who cares, not enough, no one who still believes in her like Kara does.

As Kara crawls into the bed beside her sister, curls around her side, as her wet hair scrapes against the rough cotton of the hospital blanket, as she murmurs a cracked, “I’m so sorry for what I said, Alex, it was stupid, I didn’t mean it, I’m so so sorry,” it’s then that Kara decides.

They can’t wait for Kara to get the job, can’t wait for some magical, unforeseen financial stability that might never come. The money can be figured out later, there’ll always be more money, more jobs, more offers, but right now there’s just not enough_ time. _

Kara would rip off the edges of the universe with her bare hands if it meant keeping her sister safe.

Safe, like she always kept Kara.

October 15th 

Alex leaves on a Tuesday. 

Kara can’t go with her to the facility because she has to work, but. 

They say goodbye on the sidewalk outside their apartment. Kara deposits the suitcase into the trunk of the cab, she opens the door, she takes a deep breath. 

When she hugs her sister, Alex is motionless, eyes vacant like motel signs.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Kara mumbles into her hair. “I’ll take care of everything, and I’m gonna be here when you get back.”

Alex’s hands brush over Kara’s back, and she doesn’t say anything in return but she nods haltingly and holds Kara close.

They part, and Alex hides her face as she rubs at her red eyes, and she’s ducking into the cab and it’s pulling away from the curb and she’s leaving Kara alone.

Kara turns back inside to get ready for work.

❛❛ ❜❜

She plasters on a carefree, charming smile for work because there’s nothing else she can do. She needs the money now more than ever.

She doesn’t even know where to begin with Andrea’s assignment, doesn’t know how in the hell she could ever get it done. Discovering a false paper trail of the FDA verification for the Neoremedium treatment was one thing, because that was for Clark and she never would have looked in the first place if not for what happened to him, and of course she had help from people far more knowledgeable and skilled than her. But this? Kara’s nowhere near qualified for a story like this. She’s on the wrong side of the country, for one thing, she can’t investigate someone’s entire life with two thousand miles between them. And she studied scientific research, that was her specialty, she doesn’t know the first thing about gossip journalism. 

It’s not like Kara can just scoop up her entire life and run off to Metropolis to find someone who’s got no interest in being found. There has to be a half dozen other people Andrea’s pitted on this assignment, a half dozen other people who know sure of a lot better ways to get details on someone than she does. What is she other than a bartender with a dusty bachelor’s degree and a one-hit-wonder?

Kara sighs, shakes off the weighing, anxious dread as she wipes off a spill on the bar.

She told Alex she could do this, that she’d take care of it. She promised they could do this, and she can. She will. Even if it means getting in touch with old friends from Metropolis and opening yet another credit card line just to fly out every week, she’ll get what she needs.

Kara hears someone exhale loudly behind her, and so she wipes her hands with a rag, musters up her brilliant customer-service grin as she turns around. 

Her new patron is a younger woman, pretty, pale skin creamy like frosting. She’s wearing a black lace dress, and her eyes closed, her shoulders drooped with an exhaustion Kara knows intimately.

Kara smiles sympathetically. “There’s a spot out back that’s better for naps, if you want.”

The woman blinks open her eyes to meet Kara’s, just these faint, translucent irises that completely absorb the red glow of the bar lights, and everything in Kara’s vision comes rattling down into a narrowed, precise, laser-like focus.

It’s her.

The woman Andrea Rojas has asked her to write a feature on, the woman that is supposed to be on the other side of the country, the woman whose life has somehow become the answer to everything.

Lena Luthor.

Oh.

❛❛ ❜❜

Kara talks a lot when she’s nervous. Typically, she’ll talk about the weather and she’ll talk about her sister and she'll talk about bees and she’ll talk about merry-go rounds and she’ll talk about how insane it is that zero-point-nine repeating is equal to one.

And so then she tells jokes when she_ really _ doesn’t know what else to say, because jokes are safe, jokes are easy and friendly and so much more amicable than blurting something incorrigible like, _ Hi! I put your brother in prison, got time for an interview? _

And Lena just laughs along like there’s no one else in the room.

Kara, admittedly, doesn’t know all that much about Lena Luthor. She knows bits and pieces — she’s an actress, she thinks? Or just dating one, Kara’s not really sure. But she’s part of the Hollywood conglomerate, never appeared very involved with LuthorCorp, which is exactly why Kara isn’t very familiar with who she is. She was just his sister, doing her own thing, minding her own business, making her own name. Kara didn’t think much of her.

Kara knows celebrities always look better in pictures, she won’t even recognize half of the ones she follows on Instagram when they’re sliding a heavy-plated credit card to her and she’s handing out a cocktail that sparkles red, only puts it together when she’s picking up the signed receipt. She knows they always look more glamorous in photos.

Lena Luthor is stunning, even in person, of course, but that's not the point. What Kara means is that… well, she’s never really thought twice about this woman, didn’t think her life was all that linked to her family’s. She didn’t have much of a secure mental image of this woman in the first place.

So throughout the night, if Kara notices a hanging weight to the way Lena holds her neck, a tired duel to her posture, it’s only because she sees the same sort of thing in the mirror. 

So like, yeah. Kara doesn’t really know what else to say, but also she seems like she could use the jokes. Kara’s pretty familiar with how many other people are out there right now on task to stuff a recorder under this woman’s nose, and maybe she’s already been approached.

It’s not an active choice Kara makes, in all honesty. It’s a habit she’s built up over time. Veronica’s super strict about this kind of stuff — she doesn’t care if it’s Neil Degrasse Tyson walking in that front door, Kara is by no means allowed to address a guest by their name. It’s forbidden, it’s asking for termination.

But there’s other routes to get where she needs to be. It’s not cheating, to let her words dangle, to fish for a name she already knows, an opportunity, an in.

“It was a pleasure to serve you, Miss…?” 

The look on Lena’s face, the slow velvet smile, makes Kara think she won’t tell her. It makes Kara wonder if this woman is going to walk right out the door and never come back, if Kara might never find her again, if this is it, if this was her one chance to ask what she needs to ask, the chance for a story to save her and her sister, because that’s what this is, it’s all or nothing, and what if— 

“Lena.”

Hot, bleeding relief spills over Kara, and she beams back at the celebrity. It’s not a full name, it’s not everything, but it’s a start. It’s something. 

“It was my pleasure, Lena. I’m Kara. Obviously.” 

Lena laughs again, this low sweet thing, and she nods with finality. “Have a good rest of your night, Kara.”

❛❛ ❜❜

Kara’s staring impassively at the hundred-dollar tip on the receipt when Lucy bounces up beside her.

“Damn, was that Lena Luthor?” Lucy leans an elbow on Kara’s shoulder even despite the awkward height difference, and she stares off into the crowd where Lena’s disappeared into.

Kara nods dumbly. “Yeah.”

“She’s so hot. Is she still dating that chick from the vampire movies?”

“No idea.”

“Hm. Too bad her brother’s a fucking psycho. Did she recognize you?”

“No.”

Lucy glances at Kara with a raised eyebrow, and then peaks over at the bill, and she laughs wickedly at the generous tip. “Nice work, Danvers. Now just try and get her number next time.”

Something twists in Kara’s mouth, an itch at the back of her throat, like she’s swallowed a pill wrong and it’s still lodged somewhere back there, but she can’t exactly name what it is. She stabs the receipt with the rest of the stack, and gives Lucy a thin-lipped smile. 

“Yeah, maybe I will.”

Kara stays awake until sunrise roaming the internet, learns anything and everything there is to know about the beautiful starlet. 

When she finally goes to sleep, it’s in an apartment as empty as the hole in her gut.

October 16th 

When Lena comes back the next night, that hole starts to feel a little less cold.

Lena coming back into Roulette can be equated to Kara stepping one foot closer to fulfilling her promise to Alex.

“You came back.”

Lena smiles like she means to hide it, like she’s sucking on a tart candy. “I guess I have.”

The world is a horrible, daunting, scary old place without Alex, but maybe Lena’s smile shines a whole lot like a beacon of hope in this darkness.

When Kara goes back to serving other guests down the line of the bar, she overhears Leslie Willis prodding, her pointed, antagonizing questions. She’s busy putting together a row of martinis, she’s got two shakers going over her head, and she can see how the deeper Leslie’s droll smirk grows, the heavier Lena’s frown sinks. 

Kara panics, a tic in her stomach, because if Lena doesn’t feel comfortable here, if she can’t come here as a sanctuary than she’s not going to come back at all and Kara will _ never _ get the story.

As soon as she slides the drinks to their respectful owners, Kara ignores a few snapping fingers, waving hands beckoning her, and rushes back over. 

“Leslie!” Kara forces a look of delighted surprise, tries not to think about every high school play she never got a role in because of what a crappy actress she always was. “So funny I’m seeing you right now — didn’t you ask me to tell you if Cat Grant ever stopped in? Think I just saw her headed down to the floor, but she might be on her way out again.”

When Leslie finally leaves, it’s just them. 

Throughout their ensuing conversation, Kara doesn’t know how to wrap her mouth around the question she wants to ask, how to phrase what she needs. It should be simple, this should be easier, she’s enough of a familiar face by now that Lena might not just throw her drink in Kara’s face, but Kara can’t take a chance on that kind of risk, because her sister’s life and future is on the line and nothing is worth that kind of jeopardy. 

Risk, like Alex coming back to an ever stacking pile of bills and notices and a steady decline in Kara’s bank account with no prospects of catching up. Risk like the crush of financial instability unwinding whatever progress Alex might make in her time away, risk like this all being for nothing and Alex coming back only to hurt herself all over again.

For right now, this is her chance. She just needs to figure out how to get Lena to _ talk _ to her, maybe, without completely and totally ruining any future business relationship they could have, without sending Lena running in the opposite direction.

“Thank you for that, truly.” Lena clicks her tongue, turning back to her drink and nodding at Kara.

She nods curtly. “No problem. Saw you had that look on your face.”

“A look?”

Lena’s eyebrow raises adorably, just one, single and immaculate while the rest of her face is painted still with stunning amusement, and Kara rubs the back of her neck and makes a shaky, uncoordinated gesture. 

“Y’know like, _ SOS, someone’s talking to me _. I see it a lot in here.” 

“Well, some people here I don’t mind talking to.” Lena’s smile is sly like silk, perfectly tailored appeal.

Kara’s mouth drops, and she struggles for a response. Talking? Like — about herself? Is this an open, an invitation, is she sending a signal or is this straying far too close to wishful thinking?

Kara adjusts her glasses, clears her throat.

Eventually Lena is leaving all too soon, and it makes Kara start, hesitate, drop from her rocking toes to landing flat on the balls of her feet. It’s okay, it’s cool. She wouldn’t be able to ask Lena about stuff for the story anyways, not right now. She’s not — she’s not disappointed as she watches Lena leave, no, it’s just the antsy restlessness to get the story she needs. It’s not disappointment, not like that.

But it does taste a whole lot like it.

October 19th 

She doesn’t understand how it happens, what leads to what, how this goes from Kara trying to figure out how to ask Lena if she might volunteer a few interviews, all the way to waffles and eggs at a diner.

The way Lena talks makes Kara feel like she’s got Pop Rocks in her stomach, her precise mannerisms, her syrupy laugh, how she turns the ring on her index finger over and over again, how her smiles are shy but her words are articulate and sure, how she doesn’t want to answer Kara’s pointed questions about her family or her life, how Kara somehow doesn’t mind all that much, how this leaves her breathlessly distracted from everything she swore she would find out about Lena Luthor tonight, until it finally brings her to one, slow, tranquil rest.

Kara’s not sure when things start to change.

At some point, she’s forgotten about the article, she’s instead entranced by the low rasp of a soft voice and the syllables it lulls over. Kara’s not thinking about anything except long eyelashes and the adorable curl of a mouth’s edge, that tongue-in-cheek smile when Kara asks Lena for her number.

A sidewalk, a street light, the first time Kara realizes that Lena’s eyes are green. 

Outside, in the open street under the hum of the city, it’s funny how the rest of the world is finally quiet.

She’s not asking Lex Luthor’s sister, she’s asking Lena, and this is also the first time that Kara understands there’s a distinction.

When a text doesn’t come through that night, Kara lies awake, restless in a cold bed that can’t seem to warm up. This keeps her squirming, flipping exhaustedly, a tired irritation with herself every time she checks her phone screen.

When a text doesn’t come through and the sun starts to creep over the horizon, Kara remembers.

She tosses aside the covers and grabs her laptop, opens a word document.

Her tongue weighs like lead when as she types.

October 25th 

When Kara brings Lena home for game night, she’s not just toeing a fragile line, she’s sprinting across a tightrope.

Before she leaves Roulette with Lena, Kara ducks into the bathroom, pulls out her phone and dials James, presses it to her ear.

_ “Hey, you almost here?” _

She double checks the door lock. “Yeah, yeah I’m leaving in a sec.”

_ “Great. Lucy ate all your gummy worms, by the way, but Winn said—” _

“I’m bringing Lena Luthor and I need you to not freak out.”

She hears the inhale of his next words, but Kara rushes on.

“It’s just, well, I invited her. And I wanted you to know first because you lost Clark too and I know how you feel about — about their family. But I needed to make sure you know that she’s not like that, not at all.”

The other end of the line stays quiet.

Kara sighs. “This really important to me, okay? I need you to… to—”

_ “What?” _

Kara grimaces, clenches her fist to ward off the wave of nausea that washes over, this sickening rush of guilt clouded by a blind desperation. 

“I need you to pretend you don’t know who she is, who her family is. And I need you to tell everyone else.”

_ “You’re… you’re serious? And tell them what?” _

“I don’t know, okay? Just say she’s my friend and that she’s shy about being recognized, tell them anything.”

_ “Kara, what? I mean, why? Why her?” _

She blinks off the dizzying self hatred, tells herself this is the only way. “It’s for Alex, James.”

He goes quiet again, a different sort of silence, one that coils her composure and, for just a split second, she wonders if this all was a mistake.

And then, “_ Yeah, okay, fine. Whatever.” _

Kara heaves a sigh of relief, her shoulders drop forward.

_ “But you do know what you’re doing, right?” _

Kara stares at the floor, bites her lip. “Of course,” she assures him. “Of course I do.”

Kara’s not sure when things started to change, when the axis began to shift to a different angle, when Lena was no longer the only person she was lying to.

❛❛ ❜❜

Lucy wastes no time and immediately pulls Kara to the side. 

“You brought her here?” she hisses, her wine-breath sticky against Kara’s face. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Okay, okay, I know.” Kara shimmies her elbow out of her friend’s grip, maneuvers around her into the kitchen as she rushes into an explanation. “She’s actually really, really sweet and really cool, and she’s really nice, and you guys would love her. And also we needed someone anyway because Alex isn’t here.”

Lucy wags a finger in her face. “Do not pull the Alex card on me right now.”

“She’s my sister and I miss her, I can use it whenever I want.”

Lucy growls in frustration as Kara pushes around her and goes into the fridge, digs for a juicebox. 

“Kara. Listen, I’m sure she’s all roses and dandelions or whatever, but like, _ dude. _ Does she even know you’re writing the article?”

Kara immediately spins around, tugs at Lucy’s waving, erratic hands to still them. “Gosh, please keep it down. No. She doesn’t.” Kara bites her lip, taps her foot. “...I’m actually pretty sure she thinks I have no idea who she is.”

“Kara.”

“What?”

“This is a fucking mess.”

Kara slumps back against the kitchen island, glances warily over her shoulder to see Lena taken up in conversation with James, distracted and occupied. She makes a mental note to thank him later. 

“I know, okay? I know, I’ll tell her soon. I will. But for now, just, please make her feel welcome. She’s so completely overwhelmed right now and trying to pretend she isn’t.”

Lucy retracts, pulls back in her intense urgency, but her stare remains just as full of steel. 

“I don’t have a problem with her, Kara. I’m worried about _ you. _ You usually think this stuff through, you’re the organized one that always has her shit together, but this is the type of chaotic wreck I’m usually responsible for.”

“I can’t just blurt it out!” Kara jams the straw into her juicebox frustratedly, and then she sighs, a long, drawn out, wistful exhale. “Lena is… amazing, she’s kind and she’s funny and for the first time in — in — I don’t even know how long, I just, I like the person I am when I’m with her. I can talk to her about stuff, about me, and it’s not about some stupid job I could never have or my sister who only likes me when she’s sober. With her I can just… I can be me, and I don’t have to worry about everything else.”

The ash that always clumps in her throat, every horrible and cruel thing she ever said to Alex that she chokes on when she’s alone with herself, that echoes like sirens in her ears — for once, it’s all quiet, dormant, Kara can hear her own thoughts.

Being with Lena brings out a version of herself that doesn’t leave her horrified.

Lucy, arms crossed, softens. But the corner of her mouth does lift in a half-hearted smirk. “What, and you don’t feel all that with me?”

“I’m going to tell her,” Kara says pointedly. “When the right moment comes along, I will. Because I really like hanging out with her, so — I’m gonna make this work. I’m going to get the article I need for me and Alex, and I’m not gonna mess this up this thing I’ve got going with her, and we’re going to stay friends. It’s fine.”

“Yeah, sure. Just friends, hanging out_ .” _

“What?”

“Swear to God, Little Danvers. You’ve got such a thick fucking skull sometimes.”

Kara waves her hands dismissively. “Look, whatever. So will you, please? Back me up, play nice?”

Lucy levels her with a dry, unamused glare. “Of course I will. Someone’s gotta do damage control ‘till Alex gets back.”

“Thank you.” Kara presses a brisk kiss to her friend’s cheek before they head back to the group. 

“Mm, you owe me big time..”

❛❛ ❜❜

Lena weaves into Kara’s friend group seamlessly, trickles in through the crevices and nearly fills the void that Alex has left behind. It’s not perfect, no one could ever replace her sister, but it’s ice on a sore wound, lets Kara forget for a little bit. Lena is an elixir of charm, she has a smile juicy like crisp honeydew. Everyone loves her, how could they not? 

Lena fits in so beautifully, it all seems so customary to have her there, and Kara thinks this is a dynamic she could find herself getting used to, one she’d hate to see go.

She decides she’ll tell Lena once everyone leaves. She will. It’s time.

But then Lena asks her about Alex, and she freezes. Thinks it might already be over, that Lena’s found her out. Can already feel the bone-crunching frigidity of impossible failure.

A phone call, a hospital, a different kind of paperwork she doesn’t know how to fill out.

And as quickly as the panic had gushed over, it dissipates. She realizes Lena’s not asking because she knows something about the assignment, about Kara’s intentions. Someone must have just mentioned her sister in passing, or something, that’s all. She’s just curious.

But Kara is still left with this devastating imprint of dread, of ice-drenched terror.

She loses her nerve after that.

October 27th 

Kara pokes her head into Veronica’s office, drums her fingers against the doorframe. “Hey, my cash-out’s in the box. You need anything before I head out?”

Veronica, her back to Kara, doesn’t look away from her computer screen. “Do you take me as a fool, Kara?”

Kara blinks. “Um. No. Did someone say I do? Was it Nia? Because she has a bet going with Lucy that—”

“Do you think that I don’t know about every single thing that happens in my club?”

A chill rushes down the back of her neck, she feels the small hairs stand on end.

Veronica’s leather chair spins around to face her. “I was incredibly tolerant when you came out with your side project last month, I continued to let you work here despite the… conflict of interest. I trust you didn’t take that lightly.”

Kara forces naive indifference even though everything in her wants to crumple to the polished hardwood floor. Because she can’t screw this up, not Roulette, not her one source of income, not the one backbone of her financial stability if everything else falls through.

“Of course not, you have no idea how much I appreciate you being so—”

“I have worked vigorously over the years for a certain reputation. My clientele expect a standard from me and I’ve done well to exceed it. And I’m not going to let a prying, juvenile, wannabe private eye jeopardize that. Do you understand me?”

Just the barest of hesitation, once that she’s not sure if Veronica picks up on. “Yes.”

“Then let me be abundantly clear. I will not show you the same leniency twice.”

A twitch. “I don’t… I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Lena Luthor has suffered copiously.” Mouth flat, Veronica raises an eyebrow. “You’ve put her through enough, wouldn’t you agree?”

Kara swallows.

“If you hurt her,” Veronica says slowly, enunciating every syllable with utmost precision, a stare like decimation. “You’re finished. Don’t bother to come back.”

Kara doesn’t know the first thing about redemption.

Veronica cocks her jaw, her eyes scanning Kara over. “You’re free to go.”

Haunting is an old friend of Kara’s, she’s intimately familiar with what that kind of delirium tastes like. When her past mistakes linger like omens, all of the horrible things she’s said, she knows all too well what it’s like to live with bitter regret.

Usually, she knows in the moment, at the time of committing whatever it is that’ll torment her like paranoia for years to come, she can recognize it for what it is. She knows when she’s gone too far, she knows when she’s about to.

Right now, Kara doesn’t know what the end looks like, what it might bring. 

She’s not sure which is more terrifying — the elusive, unknown, endless list of possible outcomes, or that it might be exactly what she expects.

October 28th 

Kara calls Andrea, twirls a strand of her hair around her index finger.

“Hey! So I just wanted to check in, um… isn’t there like, anything else you’d rather me do? Something more science-related maybe? I could totally do a piece on Spheerical Industries as a whole, you know since she just started working there. They’ve actually done a whole lot this year, they recently released this line of advanced self-monitoring medical devices that are gonna be sold at a really affordable price, and—”

Andrea hangs up on her.

October 30th 

She’s going to tell her. This has gone on long enough.

The mystifying look Lena gives her under the swimming strobe lights, how it feels to sweep her up in her arms in the middle of a bowling alley, Lena’s candied smile as her teeth sink into a slice of pizza — Kara knows it’s time. Lena deserves the truth.

Their ankles bump under the table, the noise alley around them dimming out, Kara opens her mouth.

But Lena speaks first.

“You know, I haven’t done this in so long.”

Kara swallows, wrinkles her nose as she shakes away the upcoming anxiety, scrounges back for the lighthearted humor she knows how to manage. 

“What, been bowling? Don’t even give me that crap, Lena, you have to practice at least on a weekly basis.”

As Lena puts herself bare, Kara stops breathing.

“Because I think, I mean it just feels like most people really do have ulterior motives, you know?”

She nods, her heartbeat far more deafening than anything around them.

“But when I’m with you, I feel like I can breathe. And — yes, the worries are still there, I’ll probably always be paranoid, but it’s easier to quiet them, put them aside. With you, it’s just, it’s this.” Lena gestures between them. “It’s just this, it doesn’t have to be anything else.”

There isn’t a beautiful way to put this, there’s nothing romantic about irony. 

What does it all add up to, what does any of this _ really _ contribute if she can’t be honest with the one person who’s given her only sincerity from the get go?

Kara always thought love was so scary because of how she would have to expose herself, how that leaves her vulnerable to being hurt by someone else. She thought the hard part was risking your own dignity, your routine, your heart.

She never imagined the scorching horror of hurting them instead.

How could she, after an admission so soft as that?

“Lena,” she complains. “You can’t make me cry onto my pizza, it’ll ruin the cheese.”

Kara never knew it was possible to be so broken in so many ways.

November 2nd 

It’s Halloween weekend and Lena is in Kara’s bed, she pulls Kara by the wrists until she collapses onto the mattress beside her.

Her breath smells like Winn’s mystery punch bowl, her lipstick is smeared over her chin.

Is this what falling in love looks like? 

Kara wouldn’t know, she’s never been there. They say you’ll just know when it’s there, and yeah, maybe there have been people in Kara’s past, ones she thought she loved. It’s always easy to think so when you’re in the thick of it, isn’t it? It’s not until they were all over and gone that she realized. She cared for them, yes, but it wasn’t love, not that ethereal, fleeting ascension. 

When this is all over, Kara wonders if she’ll think differently about Lena. She can’t imagine she will, she can’t wrap her head around anything else, but that’s the whole point. Right?

As Lena burrows her way into Kara’s arms, face tucked into the pillows, she says, “‘M really sorry.”

Kara chuckles, drapes her arm over her back and brushes soothingly along her spine over her shirt. 

“It’s okay, boozy. Just try ‘n sleep.”

“No, no no no,” she mumbles. “I’m sorry ‘cause I‘m lying to you.”

Kara freezes, her mouth pinched small, a rush of heat immediately springing behind her eyes. She closes them, wills away the pressure. 

“It’s okay, Lee,” she says quietly, wonders if Lena can hear the way her heart splinters. “It’s okay because I… I’m lying to you too.”

“Mm. You can lie all you want, if it means you stay.”

When Lena’s arms twist around Kara’s waist and cuddle her close, a stray tear slips down Kara’s face.

There’s nothing beautiful about how she doesn’t want to do this anymore.

November 17th 

Lena all but disappears for seventeen days.

December 4th 

And then, a phone call.

“_ There’s just some things I want to share with you. About me.” _

Kara stares at nothing.

_ “Is that alright?” _

If only Kara had Lena’s courage, then maybe the world could be a better place.

She clears her throat. “Yes, yes, I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”

December 6th 

When she gets a call from Andrea Rojas, she’s already reading the news.

“Kara, darling, sweetie. What the fuck is this?”

She plays dumb. “Um… could you be more specific?”

“When you sent me a preliminary draft last week, I cut the rest of my lineup. I gave you this story because you promised me an exclusive look. Now please explain to me why in the hell I’m hearing about this medical breakthrough from a TV broadcast that’s not my own?”

Kara sighs, pulls off her glasses and rubs her eyes. “I’m working on it. Trust me, there’s a better story than just that.”

“Oh, you better hope there is, because if you give me anything short of the excellence you promised then you will _ never _ have a job here or anywhere else in this industry, I will personally make sure of it.”

The dead of the line is the first echo of calamity.

December 12th 

When Alex comes back, Kara feels like she’s the one who’s been away for too long.

She nearly crushes her sister in half when she meets her outside the wellness center, and for once Kara is not so overwhelmed by her emotions that she wants to cry, no, not like that. There’s no other way to describe it but coming home, and it feels like it’s been much longer than just six weeks.

But Kara wasn’t sure what to expect, didn’t knew who she’d find when she arrived at the facility. Even once they’re into the back of the cab, and there’s a moment where Kara just sighs and Alex looks hesitant, Kara doesn’t know if she’ll be able to recognize the woman across from her, if it’s too soon to .

But when they start talking, Alex has never felt so familiar.

There’s a color to Alex’s cheeks, a pink like the neighborhood park swing set in Midvale. Her carefree smile is unweighted by her demons, and she doesn’t slouch like she’s trying to make herself smaller, so small, small until she no longer exists. 

No, Alex takes up space. She takes up all of it, with her chin held high.

“Thank you, by the way,” Alex says once they’ve finished catching up on the pleasantries, as they cross the threshold of the entryway into the apartment. Her lazy warmth as she turns to look back washes over Kara like the crackling heat of a bonfire, and it makes Kara smile. “For not giving up on me.”

Kara is… absolutely terrified of what the world has in store, of the person she’s letting herself become. But seeing the lighthearted freedom manifested in every muscle of Alex’s body, this flicker of hope for their future, it maybe makes her think it might be worth all of damnation.

Kara smiles, forces past the emotional torment to focus on what’s right in front of her. “Of course. Told you we’d get where we needed to be.”

Alex laughs with an eye-crinkling cringe. “Yeah, but I didn’t make it easy for you, did I?”

As the two sisters settle onto the couch, Kara waves a hand dismissively. 

“I don’t wanna hear it, I’m just glad you’re back and feeling better. Besides, I could have handled certain things better.”

“You did the best you could with what we had.”

“Maybe, but I… I said a lot of things I didn’t mean.”

“Yeah, well.” Alex snorts. “The Kelly thing was a low blow, but it’s not like I didn’t say anything worse.”

They smile at each other, and Kara’s heart splits with overwhelming joy, bursts open with love and admiration in a way it hasn’t in years.

“I really missed you,” she says, punctuated with an embarrassingly loud sniffle.

Alex rolls her eyes and laughs. “Whatever, you big goof. Just c’mere.”

When Kara leans into her sister’s embrace, wraps her arms tightly around her and inhales the scent of home, she sighs. Lets go. Of what, she’s not really sure, and she knows this moment won’t last, that there’s more to come that she won’t even know how to face, but for now she can afford to give herself this at least.

Pork Belly reemerges sleepily from Kara’s room, pads slowly out with lazy, blinking eyes. Alex squeals as he slowly comes over and hops up between them, and she pushes her sister off to scoop him into her arms. 

“Oh my _ God, _ my handsome man, I fucking missed you.”

“So you’ll tell him that, but not me?”

“He’s the king of the house. It’d basically be treason not to.”

❛❛ ❜❜

The hole in her gut is healing, it’s filling, it’s becoming less prominent now that her sister is home. That night, Kara thinks she might be able to truly sleep alone in her bed for the first time in months, won’t lie awake with nothing but a hollow void to keep her company in the dark. 

But something still lingers, a dent, a crack. If Kara can’t fathom why it doesn’t disappear completely now that her sister is home, it’s only because her mind wanders to thoughts of Lena. 

Kara thinks she might be avoiding her, probably because of everything with her family. She can only imagine how traumatic it must be to relieve all of those horrors all over again. Kara saw on the cover of a tabloid magazine at the supermarket a small photo of Lena landing in Metropolis, hand covering her face as she ducked into a car, and then there was the news of her medical breakthrough only a few days later.

Maybe Kara should just… break the ice. Show Lena that everything is fine and okay with them. It has nothing to do with the assignment, Kara wanting to see her. She just misses her, as if she’s been skipping her regular morning caramel latte for two weeks now. A subtle but blatant space that wasn’t there before.

Yeah, cool, she’ll do that. Lena’s supposed to be pulling twelve-hour days at work all of this week, so she’ll just go pop in, say hi. Remind her that she’s still here. 

With her sister home and a plan set in place to go see Lena, Kara falls asleep a lot easier.

December 13th 

When Lena cries in her arms, Kara wonders if she was always going to be a catalyst, no matter the choice she made.

December 20th 

Lena’s pillows smell like gardenias, like the sweet purity of jumping off a bridge into the river in the thick, pulsating heat of a Midvale summer. 

Lena’s arm is draped across Kara’s waist, Kara’s curved back into Lena’s front side, and despite the fact that there’s nowhere else in the world she’d rather be, that in Lena’s arms is the one place lately where she can actually sleep, it just doesn’t come.

The article is mostly finished. It’s missing something essential, an essence of Lena that she so desperately wants to capture in prose, but she’s not sure if it’s possible. She can’t even put her finger on what _ it _ exactly is. She can talk about all the wonderful things Lena’s done, all about the harmony of her transcendent brilliance, she can catalogue all the ways Lena puts the stars to shame.

But how does she capture this?

The soft murmur Lena makes as she sleepily burrows into Kara’s back, her nose nudging into Kara’s hair, how she squeezes her close, how her leg inches over Kara’s and she envelops her like a koala. 

The electric enchantment of gentle fingertips that brush over Kara’s skin like the late afternoon breeze, how this makes Kara believe in celestiality.

The endless depth of a steady breath that ricochets within Kara’s chest, an echo of peace and serenity like she’s never known. 

Kara’s not a jealous person, she’s good about not envying others for having something she doesn’t. She thinks it’s too reductionistic to desire after someone else’s possessions, accomplishments, qualities, it’s not that simple to just transfer one thing to another person. For every noble greatness in someone, there’s also a dark, suffocating shadow right behind it because nothing comes without a price. 

But sometimes, when the sun’s set and even a whisper would be too loud, even Kara can feel small. 

She values Lena’s opinion more than anything, she thinks that in another universe, Lena would be an invaluable resource, a priceless asset with a wealth of knowledge and so much to offer, she thinks Lena is someone she could turn to for anything and she’d always have a solution.

Kara turns around in Lena’s arms. A sweet soft face, delicately parted lips, pink and so inviting Kara almost forgets what she wants to ask. The gentle puffs of her breath are as small as a child’s, her raven hair is swept back behind her, fans across the pillow. 

It’s not even an aesthetical, traditional beauty that blows Kara away, it’s not the symmetry of her face or her sharp jawline, it’s not the even curve of her mouth. 

It’s the harmony of her equilibrium, the rhythm of calm that washes over and wraps around Kara like the refuge she never knew she needed.

“Lee?” 

When she gets no response, she squeezes her hand up between them and prods at her cheek.

“Mm. Fuck off.”

Kara smiles. “Can I ask one of my questions now?”

“No.”

Lena lets her, of course. Kara tries to stomp down the giddy smile at that annoyed eye-roll Lena always does when she’s caving into something Kara wants. It’s thrilling because she knows it’s all for show, because Lena can never hide her own smile for very long.

She isn’t really looking for an ego boost, isn’t trying to get Lena to shower her with compliments because she wants to feel good about herself.

It’s just, Lena is astounding. Her grace, her insight, it’s an immortal sort of greatness, it’s the kind people will be talking about for decades to come. 

Kara? She’s just… a bartender. She’s a fraud of a friend, a liar, she wasn’t strong enough to give her sister what she needed in her darkest times, she can barely support herself, and in a month’s time Lena just might hate her.

When the sun sets, Kara’s left only with a childish wonder as to how someone so remarkable could care about someone as pathetic as her. 

“I like that you make me feel safe even if I’m scared to death,” Lena finishes quietly.

Kara’s eyes flicker over Lena’s face, the twitch of her eyelashes that grow more still the closer again she gets to sleep.

Even if Kara can’t exactly protect Lena from sorrow, she can’t forever avoid the truth, Kara will have to tell her eventually, even if Lena might not forgive her — even if she can’t stop that all from happening, at the very least, Kara will protect her image. 

Kara’s not so presumptuous as to think it’s _ her _ word that matters so much, that she has that much sway with one article. But it’s a nudge in the right direction, it’ll get people looking at Lena the way she does, give them a glimpse of what she sees. 

She may not be able to save Lena from heartbreak, but she will tell the world of her divinity.

She will protect her name, her legacy, even if it costs her everything. 

December 24th 

It’s almost six, Lena’s already texted that she’s on her way, and Kara’s got a really bad habit of putting things off ‘till the last minute.

“I invited Lena,” she blurts out as Alex is pouring a bag of popcorn into a bowl.

Alex crumples the empty bag and tosses it in the trash like a basketball. 

“Who’s Lena?”

Kara takes a deep breath, counts to three in her head. “Uh, Lena Luthor? I want you to meet her.”

Alex laughs, hopping onto the kitchen island and digging her hand into the popcorn. “Okay, and why d’you want me to meet the girl you interviewed?”

Right.

“Well, you could say that um, we’ve gotten close, these last couple a months. While you’ve been gone.”

Alex smirks, talks through a full mouth. “Oh yeah? How close are we talking?”

“Not like — no, not like that.” Kara wipes her clammy hands on her thighs. “I mean, kind of, I don’t know, it’s really confusing, she’s confusing. But we’ve become really close and I want her to meet you.”

“Yeah sure, dork. Did you think I was gonna say no or something?”

Standing aimlessly on the threshold of the kitchen, Kara wrings her hands together, looks down at her looping fingers. “No, it’s just that… um… she doesn’t, like, really know.”

“Know what?”

Kara licks her lips. “Um, about the article? I maybe haven’t told her about it. And things kind of just… progressed from there.”

There’s a beat of silence at first, and Kara looks up nervously. Slowly, the glint of amusement fades from Alex’s eyes into something more skeptical.

“Okay,” she draws out uncertainly. “But I’m confused. I thought you said you were almost finished with the article, you said you’re submitting it this week.”

Kara swallows.

“...I am.”

Alex stares at her impassively. And then — it’s pitiful, like 2 a.m. loneliness. 

“Kara.”

“I know.”

Alex runs a hand through her short hair, setting the popcorn down beside her. “Jesus, okay, well. I mean, why not? If you’re so close, why haven’t you told her?”

“We need the money.” Kara’s mouth wobbles, she can’t meet Alex’s eye. “And at first I was scared that she’d say no, and all of a sudden this thing between us was just… more. And then it became less about asking for permission, and every time I try to tell her something comes up, there hasn’t been a good time. And now — I don’t know.”

“Are you serious?” Alex quickly hops off the island. “So you’ve just been gathering intel by making her think you’re friends? Is this even legal? Even if it is, Kara she could probably sue you for this.”

Her heart is palpitating as Alex’s questions pile up and Kara shakes her head quickly. “No, she wouldn’t do that, Lena’s not like that.”

“How much?”

“What?”

Alex’s nostrils flare, Kara sees her jaw ripple with tension. “How much are they paying you?”

Kara’s gaze knocks to the floor like boulders.

“Eight thousand for the story. And a contracted position on their tier-one journalism team with a starting salary of a hundred-ten thousand.”

Alex’s drops her chin, curses under her breath and starts pacing the length of the kitchen. Kara feels as if she’s fourteen again and being lectured on the house rules, head hanging low like a scolded child.

“So let me get this straight,” Alex starts, clearing her throat as she goes back and forth. “You’re writing an article on everything this woman has been up to since her brother was incarcerated for fraudulent medical certification and mass, second-degree manslaughter, because of an exposé you wrote, and this new article is getting published next week, and she has no idea?”

“Well, Andrea’s not publishing it until mid January. She just wanted another draft by New Year’s to make sure that I’m… doing my part. She’s going to give me her critiques and I’ll finish it next month.”

“Does she even know who you are?”

This slices through Kara like nothing else, leaves her fingertips cold, her chest colder.

Kara’s bottom lip twitches. “Look, this is as much for her as it is for me. I’m doing this for us, Alex, but also, it’s not like I’m not saying anything bad about her! I mean, this is a chance for the world to see how great she really is, to see the person she always has been—”

“Don’t you think that should be up to her to decide? Holy shit, Kara.”

Kara sucks in her breath, nods curtly. “I know.”

“How long has this been going on?”

She doesn’t think she can stop the tears, not this time, not anymore. She doesn’t know if the ground is shaking or it’s a trembling coming from within her, if this avalanche was always inevitable, if it was always going to come to this no matter what she did.

“I’m scared, Alex,” she whispers. “I’m really, really scared and I know I messed up and I should have told her right away but I—” She cuts herself up sharply as her chest starts convulsing, as the sharp hiccups crash over her, and she can’t see straight anymore. “Alex I don’t want to lose her. I can’t — I _ can’t.” _

Alex has been steadfast since her return, unwavering, balanced. She’s held herself like the world holds meaning again, like she cares about herself again. But most noticeably, she’s the sister Kara’s always known. The nurturing, dry-humored, hopelessly loving sister that raised her, that held her through everything. 

It’s part of what hurt so much when Alex fell into her struggles, when she was slipping down the deep end without a safeguard. Selfishly, Kara wondered if she’d lost her for good, lost that beloved comfort, her backbone.

And now that it’s back, Kara half expects Alex to step forward and scoop her up, to tell her it’s going to be okay, to protect Kara from the shipwreck she steered herself to its demise.

But Alex’s mouth falls into a flat, stiff line. 

“If you really care about her, Kara, you’ll tell her. Before it’s too late.”

Alex turns her back and walks off down the hall, and Kara doesn’t understand when everything started to change.

Kara cleans herself up in the bathroom, wipes away the mess of tears and splashes cold water to dim the redness around her eyes. When there’s a knock at the door, Kara clears her throat and goes to answer it. 

She catches Alex’s eye before she opens the door, one last silent plea that she hopes translates across her heavy gaze.

Alex looks way, and Kara opens the door.

❛❛ ❜❜

Lena leaves, and Kara wonders when it was that she lost her soul.

It’s while she and Alex are picking up all the tissue paper that Alex sighs.

“She’s sweet.”

Kara nods, smiles softly. “Yeah, she is.”

“I can see why you like her.”

Kara rolls her eyes. “You’re just excited about the espresso machine.”

Her sister shrugs and smirks. “Yeah, maybe. Sue me.”

There’s more shuffling of papers, clearing of trash, polite maneuvering around each other as they clean up the kitchen and get ready for bed.

Kara lingers outside the archway of her room, tugs at her sleeves awkwardly while Alex pours a glass of water in the kitchen.

“Well, goodnight,” Kara offers lamely.

Alex looks at her over the rim of her glass. She lowers the cup, bites the inside of her cheek. “Night.”

Kara has just turned her back when— 

“Kara?”

She stops, looks back. “Yeah?”

Her sister sighs. “I’m sorry about earlier, giving you such a hard time. I could’ve handled that better. I know how hard it can be to do the right thing sometimes, and I shouldn’t have judged you for that.”

Kara shrugs half-heartedly. “It’s not like I don’t deserve it. Someone should probably hold me accountable, right?”

“Still, I’m the last person in the world that should be criticizing someone else’s choices, least of all yours. Not when you’re just…”

“What?”

“You really are doing all of this for me?”

Kara blinks, twists her fingers. She thought that was obvious. “Yeah, Alex, of course. I’d do anything for you.”

Alex looks tired, all of a sudden, much more tired than she’s seemed since coming home. “Do you even want this job?” 

“Of course I do.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” Kara laughs.

“Really?”

The smile falls, and Kara stares back at her sister. She doesn’t know how else to answer, what else there could be for her. Of course she wants this job, it’s everything she’s ever worked for, all she’s ever wanted. It just happens to be the magical solution to their financial crisis, to the bills stacking up in the mail and the private loans accruing interest by the day, what’s going to keep her and her sister from living from couch to couch, homeless and lost like they were that first year the Danvers’ house wasn’t home anymore.

If she didn’t want this job, what would she be? What else is there to her?

“I love you to death, Kara, but I swear to God don’t let me be the one keeping you from living the life you actually want. Please, don’t do that to me, and don’t you dare do that to yourself.”

Kara, bewildered, shakes her head as takes a step forward to tell her wrong. “You’re the most important person in the world to me, nothing else even matters—”

_ “No, _ Kara, _ ” _ Alex snaps, and Kara halts in her tracks. But where, months ago, there was venom and hostile cruelty, now there’s just a frantic determination, one Kara doesn’t know how to process. “I’m not. I should not be the most important person in your world, nobody should be, not me, not Lena. That’s supposed to be you. You matter above anything else, and I need you to see that.”

Kara feels the paleness seep down face like a sheet of fog, she feels dizzy and as if her consciousness is stringing out somewhere intractably deep within her, she withdraws from the presence of her body as much as her mind knows how.

“I will support you no matter what you do, I will _ always _ be on your side. But I am begging you, for once in your life, put yourself first.”

Kara laughs like she means to brush off her sister’s dangerous, intense warning, flippant and worry-free, but she doesn’t know why it’s so hard to mean it. 

“Look, I promise you this is what I want. I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise.”

“Then tell me you’re not in love with her.”

Her stomach sinks, a cold like the arctic dunks her chest in. 

“I… What?”

Alex watches her carefully, scanning, searching, and Kara doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be hiding. 

And then Alex’s chin falls, and she shakes her head. “I really can’t spell this out for you.”

Kara has no smart retort, no comeback at the ready, and Alex takes the last word before she’s off to bed. She flicks off the lights, and Kara is suddenly left alone in a much different way than she was before when this apartment was empty.

When she’s in bed, staring at the black of the ceiling, she can think of a hundred and one reasons why Alex is wrong.

Kara can’t afford to be selfish right now. Yeah, okay, Alex is right, everyone being should always prioritize themselves above all else. But the world isn’t always that neatly organized and sometimes you have to set aside this contemporary sort of self-indulgence for the betterment of a greater pursuit. A quest that’s bigger than her feelings, her desires.

They _ literally _ cannot afford for Kara not to get this job, Kara’s credit is already shot to hell and they’re hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from hospital bills and the monthly rehab payments, not to mention they’re both still paying off their student loans. They’re living off one income now, the last thing Kara wants is to pressure her sister back into finding a job, not if she isn’t ready and the woes of the world are too much for her fragile recovery. The haunting linger of Alex, pale in that hospital bed, of Alex with the veins of her neck throbbing, screaming across the apartment, it suffocates her and she sees it every time she closes her eyes.

She can’t slow down for a silly thing like love, even if it’s everything she feels. 

December 27th 

Lena’s taken Kara out to dinner and she’s asked Kara to go with her to Switzerland.

Just the two of them, a weekend, a getaway from this claustrophobic life.

Kara’s never wanted anything more badly in her life, never knew yearning could be so visceral an itch. Running away to an obsolete nowhere with Lena is a dangerous line of thinking because of how easily it looks like everything she’s ever wanted.

Lena, snowflakes in her hair like confectioner’s sugar, unladen of her burdens and spinning with her arms wide open.

Lena, a frostbite pink in her cheeks, a crackling in her cold, red lips around a smile like an inferno, never to fall.

Lena, eyes blinking back the cold, a laugh like chardonnay, Kara would give her everything.

Kara thinks, surely, there must be some way she can have it all. There has to be a solution that doesn’t involve breaking under the weight of crippling debt, an option other than telling Lena that she’s publishing a story about her, a way to get the job without crushing the one person who’s ever looked at Kara not like she is blocking the sun, but rather because she is the light.

Switzerland sounds like a dream. She would love to go.

But the article goes live January 22nd and Kara doesn’t know if Lena will still think a vacation is romantic if she’s travelling with a fraud.

Kara tells her yes if only to save her the grief of hearing a no.

December 31st 

They’re on the rooftop surrounded by their friends, and Kara thinks this might be it. She thinks Lena might be far more human than she ever could be, far more beautiful and far more capable against the woes of the world than Kara could ever dream of.

Kara will always be in awe of the resilience of a broken woman who refuses to stay down.

Lena catches Kara staring. She laughs, her eyes crinkling. “What are you smiling at?”

Kara shrugs, her arm loose around Lena’s shoulders. “Nothing. I just think you’re pretty.”

Lena’s mouth falls open into a disbelieving grin, an adorable pink blush creeping around her cheeks, and she looks as if she’s trying to be coy and doesn’t realize it’s not working in the slightest. “Okay, well stop being an idiot in front of your friends, or they’re going to stop letting me bring you.”

Nia snorts, holds her first out to Lena. “Ha, good one. Bring it here.”

Lena looks incredibly goofy putting her small, cute little fist to Nia’s in a stilted bump, but she looks proud of herself and Kara’s not gonna be the one to tell her.

Brainy glances skeptically between the exchange, looks to Kara wearily and then back to Nia. “I would sooner throw myself into the sun than deem you anything short of brilliance,” he promises her.

Nia pouts and kisses him on the nose. “Aw, thanks babe. But how about you make me a drink instead?”

As the couple takes off for the drinks table, Lena hums, leans more heavily into Kara’s side.

“Bet you wouldn’t throw yourself into the sun for me,” Lena points out, mockingly glum.

Kara tosses her head back and laughs. “Oh so you’re comparing us to Brainy and Nia now?” 

“Yes, so what if I am?” Lena does that eyebrow raise thing that always makes Kara lose her train of thought. Kara’s not sure of much, but she knows that if this is a game, Lena’s winning. 

Kara sticks out her chin, looks around them, anywhere but at Lena’s toying gaze as she pulls them towards where the group is playing a game of beer pong baseball. “Then I would say you’re Brainy, ‘cause you’re the certified genius philanthropist and I’m the cool one with the better jokes.”

Lena smirks, her hand reaching up to tangle with the fingers dangling over her shoulder. “I’ll accept that answer.”

If Kara presses a chaste, short kiss to Lena’s temple before they join the game, well. No one else notices.

❛❛ ❜❜

Lena’s downstairs using the bathroom, and Kara is talking to Kelly about a recent study investigating a correlation between amygdala size and anxiety, or something along those lines, when the woman across from her sighs.

“Did Alex ever tell you why we broke up?”

Kara was busy scrolling through her phone, trying to find the link to the study, and she blinks back up at Kelly in confusion, furrows her eyebrows. “Uh, yeah? I mean, she just said the drinking got in the way, that you hated it. Why?”

Kelly nods, presses her lips together. “I did, yes. But that’s not why we broke up.”

Kara pockets her phone. “Then… why?”

She laughs dryly, loops her elbow around Kara’s and leans against the brick wall beside them so they’re facing the rest of the party. Alex is in the center currently being wrapped from both sides with purple and yellow streamers, Lucy and Sam working together simultaneously, while Winn and Nia egg them on in loud, excited chants. 

Kelly wraps her hands around the neck of her half-empty beer bottle. “I hated how consumed she was by it, not because of the way it took away from our time together, but how she couldn’t stand to be by herself in her own head for even an hour. She always needed something else to keep her distracted, some other fix to stop things from getting too quiet. I hated that she liked drinking more than she liked herself. I think she always thought I was upset because of how she’d always choose a drink over me when it came down to it but… I don’t think it was ever really about that.”

Kara tears her eyes away from the childish, gleeful scene before her, the beautiful laughter of Alex’s carefree, boundless energy, a spirit that she can’t believe she once thought was lost for good.

“What was it about, then?”

Kelly breathes in deeply through her nose. “I don’t regret being there for her, I would never do anything differently because I think I did everything in my power to help her. But somewhere along the line I wasn’t her girlfriend anymore, not really. I started being her therapist, because if I have the tools for helping someone rebuild a support network, a stable lifestyle, how could I not share that? It seemed silly not to. So I let her put her whole weight on me and that… that wasn’t fair.”

“You mean, ‘cause you couldn’t hold all of that alone?” 

“No. Because I made her feel like a patient, a statistic, when she just wanted to feel less alone. I scrutinized her and examined her like one of my books, held her up to a diagnostic standard. It wasn’t fair to either of us, and when I realized I was doing more harm than good… well. You know how it ends.”

“What about now?” Kara asks insistently. “Do you not love her anymore? Why not now?”

Kelly surprises her with a boisterous laugh, such an easygoing humor and Kara gawks at her.

“What is so funny about this?”

“Of course I still love her, Kara.” Kelly smiles like she’s telling her about her weekend plans. “I’ll always love her. But we’re in a different chapter now, and I think that might be for the best.”

Kara hates the sinking feeling that she knows where Kelly is going with all of this. “Why are you telling me this?”

Kelly casts her with a look of smart compassion, like Kara should already know the answer but it’s amusing that she doesn’t. She doesn’t get the joke, doesn’t know why the hole in her chest isn’t healing over but only digging itself deeper, burrowing further into her until she’s sure it’s about to burst through the other side. 

“Because sometimes doing everything you can to protect someone from the pain — it does more harm than good. Sometimes you just have to let them feel what they’re going to feel and trust that they will pull through.”

Kara turns her gaze away forcefully, stares off into the skyline to quell the rush of heat in her eyes. “Alex told you everything, then.”

She bumps her shoulder against Kara’s. “I am a professional analytic, you know. I could figure out what was going on for myself. But yes… and also James gave me a heads-up at game night.”

Kara laughs wryly. “Yeah, okay. But since you’re already butting in, and I know you have an opinion… you really think I should tell her, no matter how much it’s going to hurt her?”

Kelly shrugs. “Probably. I mean, definitely tell her before that all comes out. But I was trying to imply something more along the lines of, say, let yourself feel what you’re feeling. Whatever it is you’re holding back from, not letting come to fruition because you’re scared of hurting her, well. How you feel matters too. There doesn’t have to be a hierarchy.”

Kara watches Lucy tackle Winn to the ground. She’s not sure what he did, why this is suddenly turning into a pile-up and why everyone is yelling, but their silly brawl, the chaos of all of it, it brings Kara to a moment of serenity.

“You are not selfish for wanting,” Kelly says.

Kara doesn’t get the chance to respond, nothing much more than a heavy weighted look between them, Kelly’s encouraging soft smile and Kara’s stricken fear, a first taste of hope.

Lena comes out from the roof door beside them and immediately beams when she sees Kara as if they hadn’t just been separated for only a few minutes. She rushes up to them, bouncing on her heels and nudges back into her rightful spot under Kara’s arm.

Lena’s cheeks are rosy as she smiles at the two of them. “Hey you, what’d I miss?”

When Kara opens her mouth, nothing comes out, because for the first time she might actually be wondering if there is a happy ending to all of this, if it’s in the cards for them.

Kelly saves her. “Kara was just telling me about the new amygdaloid study you showed her, but she couldn’t find it.”

“Oh!” Lena pulls away from Kara just enough to wiggle her phone out of her pocket, scrolls through her Safari tabs. “Yes, it was a small lab at Harvard investigating different treatment options for anxiety. Hold on, I have it right here.”

Kara shoots Kelly a thankful look, and the other woman winks.

As Lena hands her phone over to Kelly, Kara presses her nose into Lena’s hair, inhales that milk and honey sweetness. 

Maybe she does feel things, and maybe the things she feels aren’t these tragic, villainous betrayals, maybe they don’t have to be so haunting. 

Lena smiles up at her, a brief, fleeting thing across her face, and the arm that’s wrapped around her waist squeezes briefly, framing the private moment between them that makes Kara’s ankles weak. 

❛❛ ❜❜

Lena kisses her like they are the beginning of the universe, like everything is only just beginning.

Kara kisses her like the world ends tomorrow.

January 1st, 2020 

Kara’s still wiping off Lena’s lipstick from their makeout in the bathroom when the door shuts behind her, and she rushes up the stairs but Alex and Lucy are hot behind her.

“So did you fuck her?”

“Dude, I’m right here.”

“C’mon, you know you want to know.”

“Okay yeah, obviously, but please like, spare me the details.”

“Did it sound like I was asking for a play-by-play?”

“No but—”

Kara whirls around on the sixth floor, her chest pounding and not from the climb. “Is there even anything left on the roof or are you two just being crazy?”

Lucy backpedals to avoid running into Kara, and this leaves her stumbling back into Alex who yelps indignantly as she catches the brunette.

Kara rolls her eyes and continues her trek on up.

“Okay,” Lucy pants, and Kara thinks she hears her push Alex aside and rush after her. “Okay okay okay. Listen.”

Kara doesn’t stop though, reaches the top floor, bursts into the frigid night-time air. The glare of the flickering string lights swallows the nighttime darkness, and it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the city lights and distant fireworks still flowering in the distance.

This city is her home. It has been for a few years now. And it is both impeccably brighter, glittering more than ever, and also just suddenly pale in contrast to the gleam of Lena’s dreamy smile, when her eyes are closed and mouth still wet from Kara’s kiss.

It still is her city, Alex is still her home, all her friends are still her family. That hasn’t changed.

But kissing Lena reminds her how long it’s been since she’s found sanctuary. A safe haven she didn’t know she needed, know was missing.

Kara hears a crash behind her and turns to find Alex and Lucy shoving each other in their haste to squeeze out the door first, and they stumble out onto the rooftop.

A frown sinking the corners of her mouth, she turns back to the city.

Alex comes up beside her with a dramatic huff, sweeping the wrinkles from her loose jeans. “Okay, my turn now.”

Lucy appears on Kara’s other side. “Your turn? The fuck did I do yet? My turn’s not over.”

“Not my fault you wasted your time stammering like a—”

“Can both of you please just shut up?” Kara snaps.

Alex and Lucy look at each other in alarm, and Lucy laughs awkwardly but Kara is already pacing over to the folding tables, running her hands back through her hair.

This is all so—

She can’t even articulate how nauseating it is to navigate all these overlapping thoughts and twisted, conflicting threads of responsibility and desire, it leaves her temples throbbing and her mouth dry. Because how is she supposed to navigate through two overlapping storms when neither have an end in sight?

She snatches out a crate from underneath the table and stacks the bottles inside stiltedly, and she hears the soft pad of footsteps coming up beside her.

Lucy appears in her peripheral with pursed lips. “You okay, kid?”

“I’m fine.” The bottles in the crate rattle with how forcefully she sticks them in.

Alex, arms crossed, leans against the brick wall beside the table, watching Kara pointedly. “You know, I thought yoga was supposed to take the edge off.”

Kara shoots her a glare, and stuffs the crate into her sister’s arms wordlessly.

Alex does take the box, but she immediately sets it back down and raises her eyebrows in challenge. Lucy glances back and forth between the two sisters nervously, a stare-off that is either endearingly playful and sarcastic or might break out into one of the classic Danvers blow-outs.

It’s neither. Kara deflates. 

“I can’t do this,” she confesses brokenly. “I can’t do this with her, can I?”

Alex purses her lips, lifts her shoulder in a half shrug. “That’s up to you.”

“Can’t you just make this easy for me? Just tell me what I’m supposed to do, because all of this vague, mysterious mumbo-jumbo you and Kelly have been throwing at me is making my head hurt and I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

“Hold up a sec.” Lucy comes between them, hand outstretched haltingly. “You talked to Kelly about this before me?”

Kara rolls her eyes and shuffles off again from the two of them, needing the physical distance like it might alleviate the way she can’t bear the shape of her own sins.

“Look, I’ve spent enough of these last few years dictating your life choices.” Alex’s tone implies that she’s not open for Kara to counter this statement. “I’m not doing that shit to you anymore.”

“Oh yeah, super convenient timing with that, thanks.”

“You can totally ask me what to do.”

“No,” Alex hisses, flicking Lucy in the ear. “She can’t.”

As Lucy rubs the side of her head sorely, grumbling, Kara shakes her head as the turmoil of indecision only snowballs deeper within her.

“I can, on the other hand,” Alex starts. “Tell you again that you do have a choice.”

Kara looks back. “A choice in what?”

“You feel like you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, which, yeah, of course it’s a tough decision, a huge, impossible one that I never meant to put on you in the first place. But look… I’m just reminding you that there _ is _ a choice. You don’t have to take the job if you don’t want to. You don’t _ have _to post the story.”

Kara’s not sure she can distinguish between a breeze of hope and the cold rush of crippling doubt, thinks they might be one in the same, wonders if hope ever really can come without the uncertainty. Maybe that’s what it means to hope, knowing it might be misplaced, aware of the odds that everything could go wrong, understanding the fact that it’s all based on nothing concrete. Maybe hope is trusting it anyway, even if she’s never been more unsure of anything in her life.

“Like, yes, we’ll be eating microwaved ramen and working in the service industry for the next forty years,” Alex goes on with a dry smile. “But whatever you do, we’ll figure something out. Might not be glamorous, not really the life we always wanted, but we’ve got each other. And listen, I’m not gonna pretend any of it will be easy, that I’m just instantly better and that hanging around all of you guys drinking isn’t the hardest test of self-control I’ve ever had to go through, but I’m doing it. I’m getting there, even if it’s a battle I’ll have to face every day.”

It starts slow, a chill that creeps around the base of Kara’s neck, leaves her tongue frozen.

Alex licks her lips, cocks her jaw. “I thought there was gonna be this magical fix, that I was broken and I just needed the right kind of love or a certain amount of money and it was going to take care of all of my problems. But it’s not. There isn’t some grand answer because going to rehab wasn’t about fixing me, it was just about learning how to believe in myself again. 

“But Kara, I’m not someone that needs to be saved. And it’s not your responsibility to keep trying. I don’t know when I let you take that weight on, when I made you think that you had to, and I am so sorry for that, because all the things I love about you are because of who you are, not whatever job you have or how much you make a year. I know you mean well, I know you’re just trying to do this for us, but that doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice who you are. If this is what you want, truly, then okay. I got your back. You just need to figure out what kind of person you want to be. But whatever happens, whatever you choose, you’ll always have me, because all I ever needed was my sister beside me.”

And it finally slams her in the chest like a ricocheting blast of clarity, knocks over the unfounded, precarious dichotomy of choosing between two devastating outcomes impossible to cope with.

“And maybe you could have her too.” 

Alex smiles, and Kara might actually believe her.

She never really took a second to consider that not running the story was even an option. Like, of course she did, of course everyone tried to tell her that she needed to do this right, but she was so recklessly _ blinded _ by the fear of losing her sister that this story seemed inevitable, an unmistakable given.

There were other maps she attempted to draw, strategies for how she might both land the job and keep Lena, how to save her sister and not lose this love. She’s been looking at this entire thing as if they’re two options that she must either choose between or find some otherworldly solution to weld them into one. It was like preventing an unstoppable force against an immovable object without ridding one from the equation entirely. 

She thought her proofs were sound, the conclusion logical, that to save her sister she had to publish the story, but if she published the story then she would lose the only other person she ever wanted to fight for. The argument was valid, it followed accordingly, and every attempt she made to come to a new conclusion was thwarted by reality. Kara never thought to wonder if the first premise might be refutable, that maybe passing up on the job didn’t equate surrendering her sister.

Maybe it’s naive, maybe it’s insane and far too childish to count on all the love in her life as being all she needs in order to make it through this world and that the money will work out later, but… 

Kara was never much good at pragmatics, anyway. 

“Hey, you know what?” Lucy elbows Kara teasingly, and to be honest she almost forgot she was there. “If you marry her, she’d totally pay everything off.”

Alex smacks Lucy on the back of the head before Kara has to, and they all break into unrestrained laughter, it blossoms in tendrils and Kara’s never felt so deliciously unweighted and free.

Once the laughter has died down, Kara looks off at the skyline as a crinkle sets in her brow. 

“Being a journalist has always been my dream I thought this was gonna be my one shot at it, that I had to take the first chance or I’d never make it. It all seemed so perfect, you know? The offer, the money, the position, it looked like everything I’ve ever worked for, and I think I just thought that it was the right thing to do. It’d be selfish not to, it’d be crossing this line between being realistic and flat out wishful thinking. But, I mean, working for a billion dollar company that’s trying to invade someone's privacy because it’s what sells, I guess… maybe _ that’s _going too far. Isn’t it? Someday, you know, if it’s what I’m meant to do, I’ll get there. There’s always going to be another job but…” 

“You won’t be able to get rid of me that easily,” Alex finishes for her with a wry smile. “And I don’t think Lena’s going anywhere either.”

Kara laughs, shakes her head. “Gosh, we’re really going to be in debt for the rest of our lives, aren’t we?”

“Eh, we’ve already got a tab going with the government, this is nothing new. Okay, but so now that I’ve actually gotten you to agree to drop this, I should probably tell you we got an eviction notice, and we have until the 6th to pay it.”

Kara’s head jerks up to her sister in alarm. “You’re just telling me this now?”

“_ But.” _ Alex holds up a finger, her mouth splitting into a grin. “You are also looking at the newest hire at Spheerical Industries, so. If you work every night until then and pay it, then I can cover the next Medi-Cal bill when I get my first paycheck.”

Kara blinks rapidly in surprise and her jaw drops. “You— I’m sorry, you _ what? _ Alex, that’s amazing!” 

As Kara tugs her sister into an enthusiastic hug, breathless and tight, Lucy quickly follows but not before a quiet, muttered, “Why does nobody tell me anything?”

Laughing, Alex pries them both off her. “It’s really not a huge deal, I’m just a low-ranking bio technician in the downstairs labs, I’ll mostly just be transcribing data and writing reports. Kelly knows someone who works in the labs and she got me an interview last week.”

“It is _ completely _ a huge deal, why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Alex shrugs. “I only found out yesterday, and I wanted it to be a surprise.”

Sputtering, Kara’s nearly speechless as she stares at her sister in awe. “Alex, I… I am seriously so proud of you, this is incredible.”

Alex rolls her eyes with pursed lips, but her cheeks are glowing with pride, and it’s more well-deserved than ever.

Lucy waves between them. “Okay, ditto, and we’re going to celebrate this later. But first of all, you two are not losing this apartment. It has been years since any of us have had rooftop access and over my dead body would I let that go without a fight.” She huffs an exasperated sigh and turns to Kara. “Secondly — this is seriously so last minute for you to be fixing your mess, but I don’t even care. Can you please just tell me whether y’all fucked or not?”

A blush snakes up Kara’s cheeks and she laughs bashfully, fidgets with her glasses. “When did you guys become so invested in my love life?”

“According to Winn, you haven’t so much as had a crush on anyone since college, so. Basically since you started to actually have one.”

Kara gapes. “Do you all just get together and talk about me when I’m not around? Is that what happens?”

Alex nods leniently. “Yeah, pretty much.”

Their good-natured teasing fizzles out, and Kara’s left staring at the dark screen of her phone, twisting her cold fingers around it.

Kara laughs wetly, sucking in her bottom lip between her teeth. “Am I insane if I email a powerful billionaire CEO at two in the morning that I quit?”

“Better late than never?” Alex offers half-heartedly.

“Personally, I think it’s hot.” Lucy plucks an open bag of Twizzlers from one of the crates, gnaws off the end of it. “Very big-dick energy of you Danvers.”

Alex and Kara give her an incredulous look, both of them choking back baffled laughs. But Kara doesn’t let their banter distract her again, and she unlocks her phone.

There’s this intangible relief, not just in having Alex’s blessing but realizing this is what her sister actively _ wants _ for her. 

Alex always supported her, of course, she’s only ever wanted the best for her, but that was more along the lines of chasing her dreams, continuing her studies, working her blood and sweat into unveiling the truth behind her cousin’s mysterious death when he was supposed to be getting better. Alex wasn’t always herself, there were the horrible, heart wrenching arguments that left them both winded with remorse. But there were good days and bad days, always. Some mornings, Alex was smiling. Some days, they’d research together side-by-side, like they did back in high school, and Kara used to glance across the cafe table at her sister and wonder if maybe things would turn out okay in the end. And then she found the truth, and she was getting published for the first time since a student-run college print, and then Alex was coming home from rehab and her skin wasn’t thrumming with finely coiled tension anymore.

There’s still hard days, of course, Kara won’t pretend. She had this one, obsessive and unyielding focus to guard and protect her sister _ because _ she always knew rehab wasn’t the fairytale endpoint. Alex’s struggles are something much more complex and intricately woven through Alex than just a flu, she knew that a facility wasn’t going to end it all. Some days, Kara still has to pull the blinds open in her sister’s room, has to coerce her out of bed because even though she has nothing else to do, it’s two in the afternoon. Some mornings, Alex will, she’ll get up if only to just shower and go for a walk. Some days she doesn’t. Sometimes she looks at Kara with a bone-tired exhaustion deeper than drowsiness, ask to have this one day of self-indulgence, ask Kara to just leave her alone. 

Sometimes, Kara wonders if she should. 

But if she’s learned anything about the last six months, it’s that turning around and pretending there’s nothing going on behind her isn’t any way to live her life. Kara can’t just walk out the door, can’t entertain Alex’s self-tormenting behavior because she’s worried of a snap.

But it doesn’t mean Kara can’t pull the blinds back shut and crawl into bed with her sister and queue up something on Netflix. Because a day of indulging one’s woes is fine, it’s healthy. It’s okay to recognize the darkness that caresses her cheek, lean into it and face its repentance.

It doesn’t mean she has to do it alone.

This feels like far too simple an answer to her problems, it feels naive and selfish and unfathomably ignorant of the troubles to come. But there’s a smidge of truth to Alex’s words, to her promise that Kara doesn’t have to do this if she doesn’t want to.

It’s just—

Coming home to Alex disappeared, not even for the first time, and wondering if the last thing Kara would ever say to her sister was a snarling retort that she’s just waiting for her time to run out, seeing Alex in that hospital bed pale and still… there seemed no other way out. 

When her universe was about to implode, and someone offered her a deal that looked like the key to the gates of heaven, it was only human that she took a deal with the devil.

Wasn’t it?

Alex is remind her she doesn’t have to anymore, Kelly is telling her it’s okay to give in to her desires, Lucy is begging her to get laid, and Lena is just asking for Kara to tell her she wants her too.

It’s unrealistic, it’s not a sustainable choice that makes much sense for her future financial stability, but in that moment, Kara knew.

There was never a choice to begin with.

Kara unlocks her phone and pulls up her email.

❛❛ ❜❜

_ Dear Ms. Rojas, _

_ I would like to thank you for the incredible opportunity you gave given me, and the immeasurable trust you have bestowed on me with this assignment. I understand completely that it is the chance of a lifetime, and I am extremely grateful. _

_ However, I unfortunately must withdraw myself from your consideration. I am aware of the opportunity I am passing up, and I cannot thank you enough, but, regretfully, I have changed my mind. I hope you understand, and I apologize for the inconvenience this imposes on you and your team. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Kara Danvers _

❛❛ ❜❜

“Hey, it’s about time.” A pair of arms slip around Kara’s waist from behind, a chin nuzzles into her shoulder, and Kara sets down the last of crates in the kitchen. “You ready to get out of here?”

Deciding to pull the article was the first step, but this is all far from over. 

“Yeah,” Kara answers with a small smile, the best she can manage, knowing what’s to come, as she turns around in Lena’s arms and brushes her raven hair back from her face. “We can go.”

“Good.” Lena’s red lips press into a sweet smirk, and she presses a delicate kiss to the corner of Kara’s mouth, innocent enough to not draw anyone’s attention but electric all the same. “Then take me home, Supergirl.”

❛❛ ❜❜

Kara will still tell her, of course. 

This isn’t a secret she can keep forever. She knows that. She knows Lena still deserves to know the truth about the nature of how they met. 

This hangs about and around her thoughts like fireflies flickering in the dark as Lena takes her hand. She leads her into the hallway as she calls them a Lyft, her touch blindingly sweet and all Kara can do is follow her down the stairwell, because she would probably turn down every job in the universe if it meant keeping that beautiful, shy, elegant smile on her face.

She’s dizzy with adoration as she’s pulled along, her fingers intertwined with long, pale ones. The smile she flashes behind her at Kara, it makes her giddy and light-headed, feels like the first time Lucy gave her a pot brownie. It’s not until Lena leads them outside, as they leave the hot confines of the building and the cool air outside slaps against Kara’s face, the gravity sinks in.

Lena will forgive her, won’t she?

Yes, she’s gone over it a dozen times in the last twenty minutes, there’s other jobs, other companies Kara would rather work for, other bosses, other opportunities, other things she and Alex can do, other futures she can manage.

There’s not another Lena.

Silly isn’t really the right word, but it feels — irresponsible, climatically insufferable, a disservice not only to Lena but to all the hope she’s brought and all the good in her, it just feels so dangerously _ wrong _of Kara to have come so far as this. To have had such tunnel vision for this long, held back by misguided fears and to have let this get so out of hand. There’s nothing she can do about it now, she can’t go back and redo the first night they ever met.

Briefly, cautiously, she wonders. 

If Kara had never been given the assignment, if Lena Luthor had still walked into the bar that night and Kara never had an ulterior motive, would she still have tried? To know the woman with whole worlds on her shoulders?

So Kara holds Lena’s hand in the car, keeps her tucked under her arm and presses her chin to the crown of her dark hair. She doesn’t know what to say, how to articulate anything, because she’s always known Lena was going to hate her when this all was over, of course she would. But even now that she’s shaping a different sort of ending, one where she’s made the right choice, even if she’s changed her mind just in time, it still is going to crush her. 

It feels sticky, the idea of taking this night that Lena’s offering to her. It’s gruesome and wicked, it’s not anything Kara deserves and it feels like a nefarious line of deception she can’t come back from. It comes out of nowhere, it slams her backwards and Kara can’t do this.

So, cradling her face like it might keep her heart from breaking, she tells her.

“I’m sorry, I — I don’t think this is a good idea anymore.”

Lena’s entire face falls, it’s not cute and there’s nothing poetic about it, it’s a kick to Kara’s stomach and she doesn’t know how to explain that this is the best thing she can do by Lena, because — they can’t, no, not until they talk, Kara has to tell her, she has to _ do _this.

Lena puts on a brave face, a droll smile that twitches in the corner like she’s really trying not to cry. And oh, she puts up on hell of a fight.

The idea that Kara would try and say there isn’t truly anything between them, gosh it’s _ laughable. _ There’s nothing funny about it, and Kara wishes she had the words, she’s a writer, this should be so much easier but Lena is fighting for Kara to admit something that she already knows.

“No, no, Lena, that’s not what I’m saying at all.” Kara paces away, runs her shaking hands through her hair. “Of course I want this, it’s just, it’s complicated, okay?”

“Uncomplicate it then.”

Where would she even begin? With Clark? With Lex? With Alex? Would it be selfish to start with the day Lena stole the last dumpling from Kara’s plate and she realized she didn’t really mind all that much and that was the day she knew that she didn’t want her place in Lena’s life to just be temporary? Would it be selfish to start with the night she found out Lena’s ticklish at her elbows, or what about the night she learned Lena hates it when Kara blows raspberries in her neck? 

Would it be cruel to start with the part where she loves her?

Kara shakes her head. She’s scared, her chest hurts with a terror as black as the darkness under the bed, she wants to blurt out the truth and be finally rid of this burden but she can’t face the fact it might mean the end.

Because even if it’s an ending she always knew was coming, she still isn’t ready for it.

“It’s not that simple,” she tries feebly, her voice cracking. “I mean, _ I’m _ complicated.”

“Kara, listen.” Lena’s pout is adorable, and it makes Kara’s chest clench tighter. “I don’t care.” 

Lena joins her on the couch, earnest and brave in a way Kara’s never seen in her. That’s not to say that she doesn’t consider Lena as courageous, no. She’s one of the bravest people Kara’s ever known, it’s not like that. But Kara has seen — she thinks, maybe — Lena is just as terrified of the plunge as Kara, of turning on the light in a room stuffed with every bottled thought, every suppressed feeling from the last three months.

It’s natural, to be scared. Kara would maybe be concerned if she wasn’t. 

Lena glows like starlight when she fights against fear, and not just for herself but perhaps, for the both of them. 

Lena is curious by nature, she probes and asks questions, she digs deep and most of the time Kara isn’t sure what she’s looking for, wonders if it’s insane to think that Lena has known this entire time. Kara feels frail under a trusting gaze like that, isn’t sure how her meager, freshly molded hope could possibly measure up to that sort of boundless faith.

She should tell her, now might be the perfect time if there ever was one. It claws her apart inside, this promise, this lie, what even is the truth anymore except how it’s going to break Lena’s heart?

Kara knows it’s imminent, can imagine the recoil of betrayal, the sick grief of Lena’s downturned mouth when she finds out. 

The thing is, Kara would wait forever if it meant delaying the inevitable break.

What is the truth except this? Except Lena, who only ever wanted someone to care, except Kara, who only cares about the one person she wasn’t supposed to?

Kara can’t understand why Lena won’t let her say what she has to say, it again makes her wonder if Lena already knows and has already forgiven her, but there’s never been a more selfish and painful possibility than that. 

As Lena’s hand brushes over her lips, caresses her skin tenderly and full of so much love that it brims over the edges like sunlight dribbling over the floor, Kara sighs. 

“I don’t wanna hurt you,” Kara confesses wetly, because her resolve is weakening, and it starts tumbling out of her mouth like marbles she can’t keep a hold of. “No, Lena, you don’t understand. I don’t wanna mess this up, and if we do this then I will, this won’t end well for either of us and I’m just going to ruin everything.”

It’s maybe the most honest she’s ever been with Lena, the most upfront about what it means to be with her, it’s the disclaimer Lena should have been given from the get-go. It’s laying herself bare, as much as she knows how, it’s a confession she’s not sure she’ll be pardoned for.

Lena’s breath is hot, it’s wet and Kara can already taste it.

“So ruin me.”

Kara probably hates herself more than Lena ever will, maybe that’s all the consolation she needs. Or maybe it’s the way Lena’s eyes flash with trust, with the knowledge that all the pain is worth the prize if Lena is still waiting for her on the other side.

Kara kisses her, wonders if the world doesn’t have to end for a star to be born.

❛❛ ❜❜

Lena is soft.

Under Kara’s hands, the sweet murmurs in Kara’s ear, the gentle care of Lena’s slow touch. 

Kara knows she’s shaking, can’t really remember the last time she had sex like this, with all this feeling, so much love.

It’s overwhelming, it’s devastating, it’s right.

❛❛ ❜❜

“Hey, do you remember — oh, oh my god.” Lena keens, her hips buck into Kara’s mouth, jostling her glasses, and Kara scrambles to toss an arm over her and hold her down while also subtly trying to take these stupid things off her face. Lena rolls into her mouth, a full-body shudder, and it makes the throb between Kara’s own legs almost painful. 

“Fuck,” Lena gasps. “Yes right there, that’s fucking brilliant, oh my God, please keep doing that — um, okay, no so do you remember the time that we — we — oh.” Kara can feel the ripple of pleasure that shakes Lena down to her ankles. “Oh, Kara,_ fuck.” _

Lena grabs a stray pillow, smacks it over her face, and cries into when she comes.

She moves her through it, slow, languid strokes across her center, delicate kisses to her as Lena catches her breath. But then, with a huff, Kara crawls up from between Lena’s legs and snatches the pillow away. 

“I told you to quit doing that. I wanna hear you.”

Lena’s tired exhale is more of a guttural wine, her eyes closed. “Darling, we’d wake the neighbors.”

Kara her cheek below Lena’s chest, can hear the hammering of her erratic heartbeat, is comforted by it. 

She hums. “So wake ‘em up, this is more important.”

Lena laughs, deep and husky, and Kara curls her arms around her more tightly.

“What were you trying to say?”

“No idea, I don’t think I’m ever going to remember anything ever again.”

Kara smiles and kisses a freckle on her ribs. “That’s okay.”

Lena’s hand lazily trails up along Kara’s back, brushes along the bare of her skin and Kara hums.

“I was going to ask if you remember the time when, at that game night a few months ago, you told me all the secrets and tricks to beat out your friends. You told me all their weak points, the things they weren’t good at. Do you remember that?”

Kara twists so she can see Lena looking down fondly at her. “Yeah, why?”

“Do you remember, later, when you all were playing Jenga, and you knocked the tower over on purpose?”

“I would never lose on purpose.”

“Sweetheart, you did.” Lena laughs. “You and Lucy were playing against Brainy and Nia, I think, and I saw you trying to show Brainy in the few games before how to play, but he was frustrated with it so you tipped it over when it was Lucy’s turn.”

“Oh. That part. Yeah, I totally did that.”

Lena reaches out to pinch Kara’s nose and Kara scrunches it in response. When Lena’s hand falls flat against her chest, Kara picks her hand up and replaces it back onto her head. 

Lena abides mindlessly, her long fingers grazing across Kara’s scalp. “In any case, I was thinking about it earlier and…”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I just thought it was sweet, is all.” Then Lena laughs. “You worked so hard to win, and then you just helped your friend when no one was looking.”

Kara swallows, unsure why the sticky mold of nausea like playdough is rolling up her throat. She watches Lena with wide, attentive eyes, and Lena angles her chin down to meet her gaze.

“I think you’re very noble, is all. Being with you tonight, it just… it reminded me of that.”

A flare like a hiccup, a stutter of dread, Kara wonders if it’s possible that Lena knows. If she knows Kara would sacrifice anything for those closest to her, even if it’s her morals, even if it’s love, would go to great lengths to protect someone dear to her. She wonders if Lena knows that Kara is a hypocrite, that she’s insincere and will go back on her word and play for two teams at once. It rises in her the way you lurch forward after your chair’s been tipped too far back, like bile and rotten shame.

And then Lena smiles, soft, lips sweet like cream. 

Because it’s okay, it’s alright, they’ve been through this.

Lena doesn’t know, not really, not everything, but she all but promised Kara that everything would be okay. Lena knows Kara’s got skeletons in her closet, and maybe she even has an inkling that she herself has something to do with it, is connected to Kara’s woes. Maybe, in an abstract sense. 

But it’s nothing that can’t wait until morning. They have time. 

The article is pulled, and Kara would rather spend the beginning of the year worshipping for love than apologizing for it.

It can wait.

Lena heaves a sigh, taps at her shoulders. “Alright, get off me. Can I please go down on you now? This is getting rude.”

Kara’s chest hiccups in a much different way, and her stomach swoops for a very different reason.

❛❛ ❜❜

Kara remembers one night back in November, before everything.

She’s not sure why this night in particular stood out, why it mattered so much more than all the others, but it feels essential.

They were at Kara’s apartment, watching a movie. This was the night Lena disappeared, three days before Spheerical Industries held a press conference discussing a new viral infection as a result of the Neoremedium. 

They were on Kara’s couch, the movie was over, and Lena had her head in Kara’s lap and Kara was tracing circles on Lena’s forehead, slow, deliberate.

Lena, eyes closed, had asked Kara, “Do you have any regrets?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, in your life, your past. Do you have anything that you wish you could go back to do differently?”

“Oh.” Kara brushed Lena’s hair back over her scalp, roaming. Kara remembers the way her chest had clenched, how the guilt had whispered in her ear. She thought about the early warning signs of Alex’s struggles, everything she’d kept hidden for so long, all the times Kara shouldn’t have believed her when Alex told her she was fine. Kara thought about meeting Lena, the nature of it, wondered if she should have asked from the beginning, wondered what might be different if she had followed up on a thread of curiosity when she published her first article. Because she had considered it, had thought about getting in touch with Lex Luthor’s family for a comment, for a perspective. Kara’s still not really sure why she didn’t, why she changed her mind.

She thought about the way she always knew when she was about to say something that she’ll want to take back, when she was doing something she was going to hate herself for. She thought about Veronica’s warning, about all that Lena had already been through before they ever even met, if Lena would be better off never having known her or if this was the way it was always supposed to be.

“I don’t know,” she confesses. “I don’t think so, not really. I think there’s things I would handle differently, if they were to happen to me now but… I’m not sure I’d be smart enough to go back and know what changes I would need to make. Does that make sense? Like, who am I to say changing one thing I did would affect today the way I want it too, would give me the results I’m looking for.”

Lena had blinked her eyes open languidly, regarded Kara with kind understanding, thoughtful purity.

“What about you?” Kara asked. “Anything you’d go back for?”

Lena’s smile was liquid like syrup, slow across her face. “I thought I did. Now I’m not so sure I mind all that much where today has taken me.”

Kara could be oblivious sometimes, blind to underlying implications. But she knew what Lena was suggesting. 

And maybe she was looking into places she shouldn’t, only finding these kinds of overtones because she selfishly hoped they were there. Maybe if she had stronger morals, this relationship never would have developed this way.

But it did. And Kara doesn’t trust the universe enough to imagine she would have come this close to touching the stars any other way.

“But anyway.” Lena wiggled around to further herself into Kara’s lap. “Why do you have such horrible taste in movies?”

❛❛ ❜❜

Today, there’s just the blood-curdling impact of a prophecy she didn’t see coming, the one she herself envisioned but never believed.

“I don’t understand, you said you got my email, what do you mean — the original date wasn’t even until late January, what do you _ mean _ it’s going out in a few days?”

This is heartbreak, and this is everything.

“It’s nothing personal, Kara. Or, I suppose it is. You have a wonderful talent with words, has anyone ever told you that? This was rather beautiful. Honestly makes me miss all the Luthor drama a little bit.” 

“Ms. Rojas, please. I’m sorry, I know what I promised and that you took a huge bet on me, but I’m begging you. _Do not_ publish that story.”

“Sweetie, it’s already in the works for next week’s print, it’ll be out first thing Monday morning. You know, it’s been years since anyone has turned something in so polished, the rest of my staff should take note. Tweaked a couple things here and there, few surface edits, surely you won’t mind, but otherwise it was all good to go, so thank you for making my job that much easier. This was really only a draft?”

Kara paces Lena’s room in nothing but a ratty T-shirt and a single sock, rubs at her forehead as a violent swell of panic chokes her from the inside out. This can’t be happening, she thinks the walls are closing, she thinks this is the first sound of a breakdown. Minutes ago, she was rummaging Lena’s cabinets for food and texting her to come back, to come _ home, _ and now this teetering tower of bliss is crumbling.

“I’ll do anything you want, I swear,” Kara chokes out, pressing her fist so hard to her forehead she’s sure it’s about to bruise. “I can get you a one-on-one interview with her, or — or, I can get you in touch with her family, just _ please—” _

“Listen, this is all getting a little too emotional for my tastes, so I’ll cut to the chase. The analytics came back today, and with the holiday season this year, the Monday morning after the holiday is projected to get us the biggest number of clicks, so. Gonna move that date right on up. On the bright side, you’re getting an advance, and you can swing by later this week to talk shop about your new position. How does that sound?”

Kara spins to the window, clenches her eyes shut. “Is there anything I can say or do that will change your mind on this? Whatever it is you want, whatever it takes, I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.”

There’s a sigh, spiritless and bored, the eradicating trademark of a fatal close.

“No, Miss Danvers. There was only thing I wanted, and you’ve already given it to me.”

❛❛ ❜❜

Lena walks in the door, and Kara finally understands that she was never meant for this.

Not the bubbling stardom in Lena’s eyes, not the loving infinity in her smile. 

She thought there was a way to fit this together, that there would be a perfect configuration in which everything came together, where she could come into this life and meet Lena Luthor and not break her heart.

She was starting to think that, maybe, their end wasn’t inevitable.

It’s when Lena loves her that she realizes how wrong she was.

There’s the muffled blare of angry traffic outside and blood pounding through Kara’s ears, but Lena’s silence is louder than any of it. An incomprehensible supernova sucking the air from her lungs, Kara’s hands fall to her sides, and Lena’s misty-eyed smile crumples from transcendent adoration to a sick, low finish.

Lena’s gaze drops to the floor, and it’s over.


	13. job well done, standing ovation

When Lena was young, hell of a lot younger, maybe fourteen or so, she had her first real crush. It was on a girl who learned earlier than everyone else how to wear eyeliner, who bit her nails, who wore Converse with duct tape wrapped around the holes and who wasn’t afraid of the imposing regime the Luthor name implied.

No, if anything, this girl relished in it. Loved the thrill of Lillian’s sharp edges, how she’d try to pry the two of them apart with grimacing disapproval. She loved the way Lena was just as terrified of the physical yearning to hold her hand as she was of being caught doing it.

She was the one who helped Lena jimmy open her sealed bedroom window and she was the one who taught Lena to sit on the handlebars of her bike when they went to get McFlurries at one in the morning. This girl is the one who was sucking on frozen M&Ms, with a smile far too devilish for how young they were, when she asked, _ so have you ever fucked anyone? _

Lena had laughed at the time, probably with a blush, said something along the lines of — _ oh god no, have you? _

She’s not sure how it all went down, what happened next, what led to what but she knows where the dice ended. 

Lena was never even the sort of person to put weight on something so ambiguous a social construct as virginity, it never held much meaning to her, and she’s never cared all that much about how she lost it — whatever this intangible _ it _ was. 

The part she does remember is the next week at school, the part where she learned how much other people care about it when it’s not their own. The part she remembers is this girl lacing up a brand new pair of Converse after gym class in the locker room, wearing the same cheshire cat smile as she told the other girls about Lena and a night at a sleepover. The part she remembers is catching trails of things like _ desperate _ and _ creepy _ and _ oh my god she just like, came on to me while I was sleeping and— _

Lillian had no qualms about admitting to what she’d done, the offer she made. Lena thinks she actually was a little eager to tell her. Like she was just waiting for her to ask, begging her to bring it up. It was a perfect segway to a boarding school pamphlet and the packing up of an emerald green suitcase.

The part she remembers is crying herself to sleep, face-down in her bed and burying her tears into her pillow, swearing on her mother’s grave that she’d never so blindly trust someone again. 

Not because of their courage, not because of their smile, and most definitely not because they promised her that she could.

xx

Lena’s eyes are dry like stones.

It’s a simple affair from here.

“Get out.”

With Lena’s eyes glued to the floor, Kara is blurry in her peripheral as she rushes forward, hands outstretched in a desperate plea, and it’s all too much.

“Lena, please, if you’d just let me explain—”

“Don’t _ fucking _ touch me.”

This is the part she remembers.

Kara immediately steps back, cringing as if being in Lena’s vicinity alone is suddenly scathing. She thinks Kara might object, her mouth opens as if she’s about to spill excuses over the floor until there’s nothing left in her. 

But her chin drops, her eyes crunch together similarly to how they always did when Lena would ask too many questions and she didn’t know which to address first. She takes another step back, away. She breaks Lena’s gaze as she sucks in her tears, scrubs away the mess of her face with the rough sleeve of her sweater, and it leaves an angry red mark in its wake.

Lena remembers a story, once, months back. And she thinks — vaguely, distantly — that Kara was right all that time ago.

She really is an ugly crier.

Lena’s never stood so still in her life as she does when Kara steps passed her, slowly toes around like Lena might change her mind and tell her to stay.

She doesn’t. The door latches shut.

Lena stands there for only a minute, sixty seconds of a vacant stare at the opposite wall of the empty living room, a stare that drops down to an ugly green sofa, to the computer on the coffee table, to the black zip-up hoodie crumpled on the floor.

She has five days.

She takes off her shoes and opens her laptop.

xx

When Lena’s alarm goes off the next morning, she’s already awake to shut it off.

She brushes her teeth, brews coffee, takes it black in a thermos.

On her ride to work, she scrolls through the morning news on her phone. Her gaze flits up to the rearview mirror, catches the eye of her Lyft driver for just a moment before he looks away.

She sends an email to a town car service company.

She rides the elevator up to the forty-second floor, watches the red digits above the doors tick by.

It’s just a day like any other.

Jess hands her a yogurt as she greets her, Lena gives her a stack of the data analyses she wrote up the night before, and they pick up where they left off before the new year.

She doesn’t see Sam until her lunch break, not that she properly takes one.

Lena’s in the lab recording figures from a fluorometer for a protein analysis, scribbling into a yellow legal pad, when she hears the hiss of the entry doors sliding open.

“Jesus, you are a hard woman to find.” Sam drops down onto a chair backwards and rolls it up beside Lena, draping her arms over the backrest. “So, fill me in, how’d it go?”

Lena frowns at the number she reads off the screen, double-checks one of her calculations and goes back to the keyboard to restart the trial.

Sam flicks her on the back of her head and Lena drops her pencil. 

_ “Ow, _ what? The fuck do you want?”

“Are you going to tell me or do I have to slap it out of you?”

“What are you even on about?”

“I swear you weren’t always this dense in college.” Sam shakes her head exasperatedly. “Kara? The whole undying love confession thing. How’d it go? Lesbians usually move really fast, right? How soon should I start planning the engagement party?”

Lena doesn’t turn away or cower from Sam’s eager gaze, she only traces the curve of her sarcastic smile, notes the hitch of her laughing intonation. 

This is the tensely coiled restraint she’s spent years mastering, a polished vantage point of stable indifference. This is her ammunition, this is the safeguard that’s never let her down, the secure backbone she can always count on in a world so cold.

This is preservation.

“No. I didn’t tell her, I decided to wait.” 

“Wait? For what? Lena, that girl is _ madly _ in—”

“I just want to give it some more time,” Lena interrupts. “I mean, it’s not like there’s any rush. I just think we should take it slow.”

Sam’s brow furrows, her eyes flit over Lena carefully. “But everything’s okay with you guys, right?”

Lena smiles — sweet, confident, apathetic. “Yes, of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

xx

The first thing Lena does when she walks into her apartment that night just after 10 p.m., before she even takes off her coat, is open the cupboard beneath the coffee maker and pull out an unopened bottle of Macallan.

She unscrews the cap, pours two fingers into a rocks glass.

Lena sips at the searing scotch as she pries off her heels with her opposite hand, tosses them off in the corner.

She checks her phone, a quick scroll through her notifications. There’s nothing that isn’t business related, nothing about her circulating in the tabloids, no new texts, no missed calls.

She’s not sure if it’s just an obsessive paranoia or her sheets really do still smell like apple cider and sweat. Either way, she falls asleep that night on the couch with her computer still in her lap, glass still in hand, and it tumbles onto the carpet when she finally nods off, leaving an ugly brown stain she won’t be able to get out.

xx

Friday, she gets an office of her own.

Jack steps into the lab and immediately greets her with a beaming smile, announces that he cleared a space for her on the floor, apologizes for the long time coming. He cautions her to steer clear of Jacob from geneticity for the next couple weeks.

It’s nothing glamorous, smaller than Sam’s, on the opposite end of the building with only one narrow window in the corner, partly occluded by a bookshelf, but it’s hers.

Most of the things she’s gathered over the few months since she started at SI have accrued up in Sam’s office, stray equipment parts she plans to eventually put together, paperwork from the few trials she’s been apart of, old research she brought up from storage. Sam’s held up in a meeting with the finance department downstairs, and so Jack is the one to help her carry all the cardboard boxes of her things to her new office.

It only takes two trips with his help, and as they set the last of the boxes down, Jack gives a sigh of reprieve and rubs his hands together.

“Again, I know it’s not much, and I’m sorry I couldn’t have set you up somewhere sooner.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s perfect.” Her sincere smile paints itself easily across her face.

“I just want to make sure you know how much we all appreciate having you here,” Jack goes on, leaning back against the edge of Lena’s desk. “I know it was a bit of a squeeze to fit you in at the start, but hiring you is easily the smartest decision I’ve made in ages.”

“Jack, I would have invested in SI’s stocks whether you gave me the job or not, it was an obvious choice. You don’t have to keep thanking me.”

He chuckles, crossing his arms. “I’m talking about you, Lena. Yes, with your contributions I’ve been able to expand the scope of our research and I’m thrilled, but I wouldn’t make room here for just anyone willing to write me a check. Observing your work and progress has been a great pleasure, however short your time here has been. It’s even more brilliant than I could have imagined.”

“Hm. We did always talk about working together down the line eventually, didn’t we?” Lena asks with a wry smile, and Jack laughs.

“I’m just grateful it all came together, however long it took us to get here. You’re going to do great things here, Lena, of that I’m certain.”

Lena waves him off with a light laugh. “Alright, get out of here before your favoritism starts to show through.”

He holds his hands up in mock defense as he rises from the desk’s edge. “Yes, yes, let the genius work, I get it. I’ll leave you to it.”

Before he exits out, his hand falls onto the doorframe, and he turns back. “Lena, I want to make sure you know that while your work here is invaluable and you have my utmost respect on a professional level… you can still always talk to me. About anything.”

The soft smile cracks, if only for a moment. She feels the corners slip, the stuttering of a heartbeat, she wonders how he could possibly know. But then it just as quickly passes.

She has three days. For now, this is still her secret to keep.

“Thank you, Jack. I’ll keep that in mind.”

xx

Lena is sitting at her desk browsing Amazon for a new chair, as the one she’s in now as stiff and misshapen from wear, when her desk phone rings, and after a quick tap, Eve’s voice comes through crisp and clear.

“Lena, hi. Um, there’s a Ms. Danvers here to see you.”

A poisonous dread seeps through her veins, she can palpably feel the blood drain from her face.

She shakes it off, clenches her jaw.

“Tell her I’m busy, please. Thank you Eve.”

Lena goes to hang up, but the receptionist’s voice squeaks back through.

“Well, you see, the thing is, she’s already on her way up.”

Lena’s heart stops. “I’m sorry, you already let her in?”

“I couldn’t stop her! She has a pass for the building, and I only knew to call you because she asked me what floor your office is and—”

“So you just _ told _ her?” 

“Well, she does work here. That’s sort of my job.”

Lena blinks, and her hand hovers over the end-call button, still as midnight.

She swallows.

“Okay. Thank you, Eve.”

xx

Some time later, at least ten minutes, there’s a knock at the door and Lena looks up as Alex steps confidently into the room. It stirs something almost bitter in Lena, this brave audacity of a woman who shows no reservations or timidity in front of her. For as long as Lena’s been running from the looming shadow of her family name, she can’t help but miss the implicit intimidation it carried.

“Hi. Sorry.” Her tone gives the impression that she’s anything but. “I know I should have called ahead, but I— wait, are you leaving?”

Lena blinks in confusion, but then she realizes Alex is looking around the room at all the boxes she hasn’t taken the time to unpack, the clutter, and she rolls her eyes.

“No, I just moved in. What can I do for you, Ms. Danvers?” 

If Lena thinks that the name doesn’t taste fermented and spoiled on her tongue, she’s only lying to herself.

Alex stuffs her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket, and Lena raises an eyebrow in waiting.

“Kara doesn’t know I’m here.”

Lena bites her tongue before she answers, counts to three. “If that’s what you’re here to talk about, then save your breath because I’m not interested.”

“Okay look, I’m not here to make excuses for her. That’s not my place.” Alex looks around as if for a place to sit, but there’s no other furniture, just the boxes, and she looks at Lena in question. “Can I sit on this? I’ve been on my feet running errands all day.”

She gives a slight inclination of her chin, and Alex drops carefully onto a box filled with old CAR-T paperwork, scooting around so as not to crush it. 

“Please, enlighten me then.” Lena waves a hand dismissively, turning back to her Amazon cart to at least give the appearance of being too busy for this. “What could possibly be so important for you to tell me that you found it acceptable to show up at my office unannounced.” 

Alex chuckles dryly. “Yeah, fair enough. But would you have agreed to see me if I’d called first?”

“No.”

“There you go then.”

“So you thought that using an element of surprise to pressure me into compliance was the better choice? You and your sister really do have more in common than I thought.”

She doesn’t mean for the comment to slip out, for the lace of bitter resentment to soak her words and drip from the consonants like a sour, broken-hearted schoolgirl, but Alex looks far from surprised. If anything, she looks like this was the sort of attitude she’d been expecting.

“How much do you make a year?”

She looks back up from her screen. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry, I don’t know exactly what you do here but, ballpark. How much you make?”

Lena wouldn’t even know how to answer that question, the salary she and Jack came to an agreement on with SI was more on the conservative side, not even six figures, but it’s not like she needed anything more. She’s been set up with an incremental inheritance since she was twenty, one that’s given to her in chunks every five years until she’s forty. It was something Lionel had done, for both her and Lex, in an effort to spread out what he was leaving behind. She had no idea what happened to Lex’s share of things, where that goes now, and she hasn’t cared enough yet to call Lillian and ask. Then there’s her accountant back in Metropolis who helps her remotely manage her other stock holdings. And since she owns no property or estate, and is still renting her apartment — because when she’d come to this city, she had no idea how long she would stay, if she would want to — her best shot at rebuilding her networth has been just investments and accrued interest rates on her savings account.

So, her income was a tricky question, not exactly the answer Alex is looking for, but irregardless: “That’s a rather rude thing to ask someone.”

God, does she sound like her mother.

“Have you ever been homeless?”

Lena blinks, furrows her brow.

“Have you ever had the government seize over half your paycheck because of a longtime outstanding debt, had to skip most meals just so you could make rent? You ever had an eviction notice on your door giving you a few days to pay before they take you to court?”

“I’m sorry, how is this at all relevant?” Lena asks lowly, warningly, because there’s a dangerous rise in her throat, telling her that she does in fact know exactly where this is going.

“You don’t forget that kind of trauma.” Alex’s tone is unwavering, gentle, not like she’s performing a lecture but admitting an intimate secret. “No matter how much money you ever make, no matter where you go, you don’t ever forget the anxiety, the desperation. It haunts you.”

Lena closes her laptop abruptly. “Look, if you’re trying to appeal to my guilt by reminding me of the privilege I come from to justify something, I can assure you I am painfully aware of the blood in my family’s ledger. I’m trying to change that, and use this wealth to help people now.”

“No, okay I’m not trying to justify anything.” Alex folds her arms over her knees, takes a deep breath. “Dude, I don’t care that you’re rich, you can do whatever you want with your money. It’s not about that.”

Lena clenches her jaw.

“I’m not about to tell you what an amazing person my sister is, all the great qualities she has and all the reasons she did what she did, she can do that herself if you decide to hear her out. I’m not trying to give you a score on how all the good outweighs the bad. I’m not going to tell you to forgive her just because I know what kind of person she really is, because I don’t think I could even actually convey that to you, not really.”

“You’re right. You can’t.”

Alex quickly comes to her feet again with a shake of her head. “I’m just trying to say that there’s certain things you will never understand about us. About her.” 

“Okay, yes, there’s a dangerous socioeconomic division in this country, and I know people like me can’t speak on how the other half truly lives, but—”

“No, see that’s the thing, there’s no but. You can memorize all these statistics and you can study the system, and honestly you can even fight for change, make donations, help people in need, whatever it is you do. But you will never know what it’s _ like _. You can read about it, I can tell you about it, and maybe you can even empathize. But you need to know that she carries a burden you will never understand.”

Lena leans back into her chair tiredly. “What’s your point, Alex?”

She comes to a stop at the edge of Lena’s desk, picks up a clear, lucite paperweight with a black scorpion embedded inside, a gift Sam had dropped off between her meetings for the new office, and Alex turns it around in her fingertips. Sam thought it was amusing, Lena finds it ironic.

“I know don’t know you, not really. I won’t pretend I know your life or what you’ve been through over the last year.”

“Oh? Why don’t you ask your sister then, she’s quite the expert.”

Alex rolls her eyes and sets the weight back down. “You’ve been through a lot, okay. I get that. You’ve suffered too, in ways I’m never gonna get and that’s your weight to bear. What I’m trying to tell you is so has she.”

Lena lets out a droll, sour laugh. “Wonderful, let’s just all sign up for a group therapy session, is that what you suggest?”

For the first time since she’s come up, since Lena has met her actually, Alex turns on Lena with a sharp gaze. It’s not angry, not a simmering blade of contempt that Lena is so adept at delivering, but it’s hard, ragged. It’s fierce like devotion, and inexplicably it reminds Lena of Lex, if only for a moment.

“I’m not asking you to forgive her because she has a good reason for what she did.”

“Yes, you keep telling me all the things you’re _ not _ doing, but when do we get to the part where I find out what you’re actually here for?”

“When someone hurts you, you know right away whether you’ll ever be able to forgive them,” Alex says forcefully, holding Lena’s eye with a determined resolution.

Lena raises an eyebrow, as if to say, _ really? _

“Tell me I’m wrong, tell me you don’t feel in your gut whether or not this is something you can ever move past. Maybe it’ll take a week, or hell it’ll probably take months, but when shit like this happens, you know what you’re capable of.”

It’s instinctive. “Fine, I do know. I won’t forgive her.”

Alex runs her hands through her hair, almost impatient. “Look, we live in a society that tells us this shit is unforgivable, betrayal is a line you don’t cross, I know. Someone cheats, that’s it, it’s over. Your friend stabs you in the back, you cut them out, you move on, whatever.”

“So you understand me perfectly, then.”

“Yeah, honestly I really do.” Alex grimaces, and she breaks Lena’s stoney gaze. “I hold grudges like it’s my job, I always have. There’s never been any of this second chance bullshit, I don’t care if I even came one day to peace with it. Hell, I usually forget what even happened years later, but I’m still not gonna let it go.”

“You should really talk to someone about that.”

Aside from a quick, pointed glare, Alex ignores the comment. “But then I became the person that was the one apologizing, the one doing the unforgivable.”

Lena presses her lips into a thin, pale line. Her heart rate is fleeting in her ears, like wind racing down a tunnel, but she’s as stable and unmoving as ever.

“I put everyone in my life through hell for a really long time,” Alex says quietly. “I lost a lot of people I really cared about because of it. And I don’t blame them, I’m glad they walked away when they did because I was just destroying everything I could touch.

“But the one person I hurt the most, the person that I belittled and attacked over and over, day after day, for goddamn years, _ she’s _ the person who fought hardest for me.” Alex laughs, loud and devastating, and Lena struggles to meet her eye. “If there was ever a person who had every right to never speak to me again and cut me out, it was Kara. There’s not one good, sound reason I can think of for her to forgive me for the things I said, the things I did.”

“Yes, well, that’s what family’s for, right?”

Alex levels her with a flat look. “You know better than anyone that’s not enough.”

“Then what is enough?” Lena retorts hotly. “Congratulations, she’s a saint. Are you trying to pin this on me now? Say that I’m the monster here for not wanting to forgive Mother Teresa?”

“Kara didn’t forgive me because she had a reason to,” Alex says restlessly, the twist of her mouth desperate. “She didn’t forgive me because she trusted I wouldn’t do it again. That was a choice she made every single day, with every single apology, wholeheartedly knowing I was just going to fuck up again. And you want to know why?”

“Oh, because she loves you,” Lena answers dryly.

“No, she did it because forgiveness isn’t something you do for someone else, it’s a gift you give yourself.”

Lena stares back at Alex impassively. “How poetic.”

“Kara taught me that. It’s not about the logic, it’s not about whatever excuse or explanation she has and whether the end justifies the means. It’s not about whether she deserves it. You just… you forgive her because you want to. Even if you don’t totally understand why.”

Lena keeps herself well organized, she has an impeccable filing system of her emotions, sentiments, it’s all well catalogued and neatly aligned. This is her reprieve, what gets her up in the morning, the balanced compartmentalization.

This moment rocks that foundation like entropy.

Lena’s eyes drop to somewhere just over Alex’s shoulder, and she stands. “I think you should go. I have a lot of work to get back to.”

If it’s pity that paints Alex face like slime, Lena refuses to see it. 

Alex bites her lip, like she might preach some more about virtues and love, but then she ducks her chin and nods with finality. 

As she walks her to the elevator, distrusting both of her to find her way on her own and that she might not go snooping around in the rest of Lena’s life, one last thing occurs to her.

Her tone is even, calculated. “Did Sam know?”

Alex stops in front of the elevator, hesitating over the call button. “Your Sam? No, no of course not. I didn’t even know until a week ago.” 

Lena resists the recoil, nods minutely.

Alex’s shoulders drop forlornly, her face grossly sympathetic, and Lena jabs at the call button. 

Alex clears her throat. “I’m assuming you haven’t told her then?”

Lena scoffs darkly. “No, I don’t plan on telling anyone that I’m the biggest idiot of the decade, thanks.”

“Oh. Um, so you’re probably sick of hearing my opinion at this point, but—”

“Yes, I am.” She presses the button again impatiently.

“Just, look, don’t shut everyone out. It sucks, trying to deal with all this weight on your own. And I think it usually just makes it all worse.”

The elevator doors part open, and Lena turns back to Alex.

“Thank you for interrupting my very busy day for some completely unsolicited advice, Ms. Danvers. Have a good afternoon.”

She’s barely made it three steps away before Alex calls back to her, far too loud in the middle of the office for her liking. 

“She’s not going to reach out first, you know.” Alex is half-in, half-out the elevator, her hand against the sensor to keep the doors open.

Lena gives Alex a cautious, quizzical look. “Good. I don’t want her to.”

“She thinks you hate her.”

“I do.”

“Do you? Or do you just wish you did?”

“Are you going to leave? Because I don’t care that you work here, I will call security,” Lena snaps finally, waving to the doors that are still attempting to close. “You don’t know the first thing about me, and I swear to god if you break my elevator—”

“Every time her phone lights up, she jumps on it. She keeps it on full volume while she sleeps, it’s always in her hand and she’s not even doing anything with it. She’s been back and forth with CatCo nonstop for days trying to pull the plug on this thing, dude do you have any idea how in lo—”

“You’re a wise woman, Alex,” Lena interrupts sharply, taking a dangerous step forward so that her biting, hushed tone can be heard. “You are incredibly intelligent, and you have a profound understanding of the world that few others do.”

Alex stubbornly doesn’t back down from Lena despite the mere inches which separate them.

“But you’re a fool if you think I give even a damn about her now.”

Lena doesn’t wait this time for Alex to leave, her skin thrums all over and she can barely suppress the shiver that runs down her spine as she turns her back on this woman with a harsh finality that Alex would be mad to challenge again.

Heels clicking down the hall, Lena hears the faint ding of the elevator doors alas closing, and she all but slams her office door shut. She is quick to send Eve a message that if anyone else comes asking then she’s out of the office, all stilted, halting movements and barely clenched refrain as she flips back open her computer. She exits out of her shopping window because right now she needs something more stimulating, something that’ll consume every neuronal pathway and leave no space for wandering thoughts, and she opens up the latest lab report from the new project she’s started with Jess.

She barely registers it at first, it’s only the first waves of an itchy discomfort. But it grows, it spreads like a thick-clouded fog, her heavy, panting breaths, the cold trickle of sweat at the base of her skull, her muscles so rigidly contracted that not only is her whole body shaking but her laptop screen is wobbling back and forth with her harsh jabs across the keyboard. She has to push away from her desk abruptly to calm herself, she sucks in sharp lungfuls of air as she runs her hands up and down her arms.

Lena doesn’t know how long she sits there, bent over in her cheap desk chair, gasping like she’s run a marathon, a whirling lightheadedness swaying her balance and palpitations so violent she feels as if she might vomit.

But then her breathing steadies out, her hands still again. Time, it just takes time.

This is healing.

xx

Saturday morning, Lena sits at her dining table in jeans a cashmere sweater with a black mug of coffee beside her, tendrils of steam swirling from its surface. She gets so far as to pull up the number of her old publicist, her finger about ready to tap the call button on the screen, when she hesitates. 

Lena never had a publicist for very long. It was the same one who handled Lex’s relations in the public eye when their parents first started bringing him out for events, showing him the long winding carpets. She’d been nice enough, just a rather forgettable face, and she was good at damage control whenever Lex said the wrong thing here or there, when he stumbled in an interview and said something of their family in poor taste.

She had been from an agency that Lionel used when he first went on a book tour before Lena was born, and from what she understands, that was how he’d met her mother. Her birth mother. Somewhere in Europe, signing autographs and giving presentations on his proposals for making angiogenesis inhibitors a reality. One day in a cafe he met an Irish woman who had a soft spot for travellers, and that was it.

It’s nothing Lena remembers herself, just whispers of it over the years. She knows there were deals behind closed doors of keeping someone quiet, pay-offs for discretion, a rather simple plan all orchestrated by said family publicist, who then worked for Lex. 

And then soon after, she was working for Lena. Lena hadn’t used her much, she was more a safeguard Lillian sent after her when she ran off with Siobhan to keep things as respectable as possible. But after a certain point, Lena and Siobhan had made out in too many public restaurants and Lena had walked into too many busy tourist areas with one too many hickeys, and it was mostly a lost cause by that point.

She almost calls this same publicist because, well, it’s who Lena knows. She’s been with the family for nearly three decades at this point, she follows orders and, for the most part, she stayed out of the limelight. Lena forgot she was even there most of the time. She was efficient, Lena supposes. 

But now, she hesitates.

She works her bottom lip between her teeth, sets her phone down, and the barest of a frown settles in her brow.

She’s not hiring someone just to help maintain her public image, to help the media get the proper perspective on her, no, she’s not concerned with paparazzi and gossip. When she first moved to this city, sure, it was always on her mind but it’s less essential now, even with what’s to come, the damage control she’ll likely have to do in only a few days time.

No, Lena needs a different sort of precise management, someone with a sharper eye, someone who she can always count on to tell her the truth, even in a world where no one can be trusted. 

She picks back up the phone.

xx

She doesn’t mean to drink so much.

Lena only brought so much work home for the weekend, and by nine p.m. on Sunday she’s gone through everything, and then done it all again. She considers going back into SI to print out more reports from her office computer, work in the lab for a few hours, but it’s already too late on a weekend night even for her, and the lab will likely be locked if no one stayed.

It starts as her nights have been going all week — a generous helping of expensive scotch that normally would take her over a month to go through but is now nearly finished, curse the small bottles. But then “mostly finished” becomes “totally finished” and the ceiling light fixtures seem to flicker and sway even as she sits completely still. The drone of the television is too elusive for her to focus on, the 4K definition makes her blink her eyes away and none of it holds her attention. 

Instead of curling onto her side, putting her back to the screen and hiding under a throw until she falls asleep — because she can deal with the headache and dry-mouth in the morning, that’s Future Lena’s issue to deal with — she stands. 

It’s not that she’s that drunk, per se. She’s not stumbling to the elevator, she has no issue calling a Lyft and she manages clean, crisp responses to the driver in their stilted small talk. The brisk night air is sobering in itself, smacks her in the face, and it’s enough to make her ask herself if this is still a good idea.

Of course it’s not, it never was.

She still gets out of the car.

The man in the alley that leans against the brick wall with his nose buried in his phone nods her inside with barely a glance up, he recognizes her easily enough by now. It’s the same red-lit, dark and narrow hallway leading up to two security personnel standing on either side of the nondescript elevator. It’s the same keypad inside, just a ground floor and a nameless _ other, _ it’s the same straight shot up that makes her stomach swoop, reminds her how little she’s had to eat today. It’s as she pulls uncomfortably at the stifling collar of her sweater that Lena realizes she’s still only in jeans, has a bare sheet of makeup. She suddenly feels naked without her traditional swipe of lipstick, without a safety net of concealer, and as the elevator doors slide open in a quiet hiss, her stomach is twisting heatedly and she’s not sure that it's only because of the alcohol.

She rounds the bend of the shadowy lobby room to find the same tall, unsuspecting hostess stand and the elegant woman behind it.

Veronica’s dressed modestly tonight, a sleek black gown with long sleeves extending down her arms, fitted to her like paint. It dips dangerously low down her chest, a sliver of skin all the way to her abdomen, and the peak peak of Veronica’s leg around the edge of the podium reveals a long slit up to her midthigh.

“Hey sweetie,” the club owner says in a low tone with a daring smile, her eyes crinkling. “It’s been a hot minute, I’ve missed that grumpy face.”

Lena remembers her first time here, the irritating smirk on Veronica’s flaming red lips, her imposing questions and pointed reminders of her recent breakup and family turmoil. She remembers how she almost turned around and left, how she almost never even went inside. But she was so unbearably lonely in this smothering city that even someone as infuriating as Veronica was worth the company.

She was so close to walking away, to never having come even near this end.

They never got along in boarding school and not in the brief overlaps of their lives since then, but they weren’t mortal enemies or anything. They were almost friends once, even. A party, a loose-lipped conversation and a few things Lena shouldn’t have said aloud, Veronica was the first person that didn’t drop her gaze in second-hand shame when Lena confessed she liked girls, her tongue slurred from one too many beers.

Mind you, Veronica was also the person who told the entire field hockey team, but still.

“What can I say? Guess I just couldn’t stay away,” Lena answers coolly, entertaining Veronica’s senseless flirtations. Normally she’s already into the club by now, she gives Veronica barely a cheeky wave and a half-assed thank you because she’s in such a rush to get to the bar. 

Now, she doesn’t know what she’s itching for, what she’s rushing towards, but it’s not whatever waits for her behind those doors now.

“And that’s what I like to hear.”

“Yes, I don’t know if you know this, but you’re very predictable.”

Veronica grins, her eyebrows raising with intrigue. “Coy’s never really been my thing. Waste of time, if you ask me. I’ve always preferred to get to the point.”

“Funny, looks like we do have something in common after all.”

“See, this is the Luthor I love and miss.” Veronica flicks her hand in a vague gesture over Lena’s frame. “When you’ve gotten over blowing smoke up my bartender’s ass, just know I’ll be waiting for your call.”

Her throat stiffens, feels tight like it does when it’s too cold out to even breathe.

“Maybe I will,” Lena responds as she forces her tone steady.

But it must fall flat, because the stretch of Veronica’s sultry smile begins to soften. It drops at the edges the longer Lena stands there aimlessly, and it’s not until the other woman’s gaze lowers to Lena’s hands that she even notices she’s fidgeting with them of her sweater mindlessly, her fingers shaking.

Lena knows she’s lingered too long, but doesn’t realize it until it’s too late.

“Okay, not to be a drag but… are you alright?” 

A twinge of nausea spikes in Lena’s gut, one that has nothing to do with the toxins in her blood, and it takes her a beat too long to scrounge up a smile.

It’s a pitiful, synthetic thing across her face, it feels entirely out of place and they both know it.

“Yeah.” Lena’s tone is far stronger than her face can manage. Quickly, Lena gathers herself, gestures to the door behind Veronica. “Well, I better head in then. Nice to see you as always, Veronica.”

But Veronica doesn’t move. She doesn’t immediately open the door for Lena, she holds steadfast in her patience. She eyes Lena carefully, up and down, and Lena wonders if she can smell the truth on her breath as easily as the alcohol.

She must find nothing, she pulls back the red rope, and with far more sincerity than Lena’s ever heard from her, Veronica nods her in. “I hope you have a good rest of your night, Lena.”

“Sure. You too.”

What a joke.

xx

It almost feels like a dream as Lena drifts down aisle between lounge tables and low, leather couches, as she passes the thumping dance floor, it feels like she’s floating as she ascends the short, spiralled staircase.

It’s when she sees the bar that the nightmare of reality sinks in. .

While it is Sunday, it’s still the weekend, and so Lena’s not surprised to see that the bar is full. She considers making her way down to the end, where she’s lingered so many times just to be close to the workers’ entryway for behind the bar. She would stand there with Sam on nights like this, when they wanted a drink, nursing it until a space cleared, making smiles at the girl on the other side. 

A courageous girl, a girl with a smile of promise.

For now, Lena waits by an empty table tucked away from the bar. She leans against it for balance as she arches on her toes to catch a glimpse of the fleeting form rushing back and forth behind the bar, craning her neck. And finally she finds— 

It’s Lucy.

Lena blinks, falls back to the balls of her feet. 

No, she works Sunday nights. Doesn’t she? Sure, a few times she had it off, would spend them with Lena, but that was usually when she actively got rid of her shift to spend time with her, it was always on her regular shift, she has to be here, it’s the last day, she can’t—

The back door to the stock room swings open, and a figure with a stack of crates full of bottles emerges, their face obscured.

Lena really did expect broiling nausea, through all of this. She expected the floor to teeter beneath her feet like a circus ride that doesn’t stop, to fall to her knees and feel the ugly gravity of this mountain bearing down on her in this final hour.

Kara sets the crates down behind the bar, disappears for a second, and Lucy seamlessly squeezes around her to keep working.

Lena just watches with stilted apathy as Kara restocks. She absently picks at a hangnail on her thumb, hiding in the shadows and once again acknowledging that she’s not completely sure what she’s doing here. It certainly doesn’t feel right, but everywhere else feels wrong, and something about that doesn’t sit well with her.

She just… she really expected more than this.

Lena doesn’t know how long she stands there, watching. It feels like it could be hours, but she knows that’s her foolish, tipsy brain fueling her emotions, and she finally makes to a newly opened seat. It can’t have been more than a few minutes because the thumping in her temples is the first tell that she’s still drunk.

No, _ tipsy. _ She’s not that drunk.

When Lena hops onto the barstool, her foot slips on the rest and she nearly falls off the chair entirely, and there’s an embarrassingly loud screech as its legs scrape against the floor. She quickly rights herself of course, but Kara and Lucy had been talking quietly behind the bar by the computer, and both bartenders’ heads swivel towards her at the noise, and Lena feels the flush crawl up her neck.

Well, at least the lights are red.

It’s not that she particularly wants to, honestly she’d rather stare pointedly at the bar top and keep her pristine air of indifference, but in a sudden spark of bitter, spiteful distaste, she looks up to meet Kara’s eyes.

_ Look me in the eye, _ she thinks. _ Look me in the eye when it sinks in. _

Kara’s mouth parts in surprise, slow, her face frozen like dusk. 

“Lena,” she says breathlessly, her face twisted like shipwreck.

This is immunity.

“So,” Lena drawls, loud enough to be heard over the gap between them, dropping her chin into her palm as she slouches over the bar. “What’s it take for a girl to get a drink around here?”

Lena almost doesn’t notice the way Lucy glances between them, her furrowed, concerned frown at Kara. But then the blonde gives the slightest shake of her head and quickly sidesteps her, coming down the bar to stand in front of Lena.

Kara’s throat bobs with a thick swallow, and Lena wonders if the hickey is still there, if she could still see it were they under better lighting, she remembers the way Kara gasped in her ear when she planted it, the jolt of her hips, the dexterity of rough fingers, she remembers—

Kara’s mouth bobs open helplessly, like she’s trying to say three different things at once but can’t settle on one, fiddling with the bar rag in her hand but her eyes never wavering from Lena’s.

She forgets.

Finally, Kara drops her chin low to her chest. Wordlessly, she reaches for something out of Lena’s eyesight, and a second later she’s placing a glass of water in front of her, tentative, as if Lena might lash out and throw it at her. 

She does consider it, to be fair.

But as Kara pulls her hand away and makes no other move, Lena realizes what she’s implying, and she rolls her eyes.

“Not exactly the drink I had in mind.”

Lena can make out the way the blonde clenches her jaw, the strain of tendons under her skin, for a moment she thinks Kara would actually argue with her.

But Kara’s shoulders sag, and her tone is soft compared to the barely muffled pounding of music in the club. 

“Okay. Your usual?”

Lena’s eyes flare with bitter amusement. 

“I’ll take a Glenlivet, neat.”

The first drink goes down rather quickly, Lena needing to rebuild that safe buzz that brought her here in the first place. Because if she sobers up for even an instant, she’ll lose her nerve and the crushing weight of sensibility will set in. This won’t feel like just a reverie anymore, some twisted fantasy where she faces her woes like she needs to in order to move on.

No, if she sobers up then she’ll realize she’s just a pathetic, naive girl who let a broken heart get the better of her.

Her stare scrapes over Kara like nails, she drags it all over her face and form, digging into the tightly-wound anxiety of her shoulders, the clench of her lips tightly pressed together. It’s too dark to see anything substantial, anyone looks pale in this sort of ambiance with the way shadows slip under her cheekbones or smear under her eyes, but it’s not real. It’s just the lighting, of course it is.

It’s funny, really. Lena didn’t know what she was looking for before back then, when the unmistakable truth was glaring her in the face. At least she thought she didn’t. It just turns out that Lena was too much of a coward to realize it was painfully obvious all along what she was looking for.

And she found it, she did, the answer was always there, but she chose not to see it.

It’s truly laughable because now, watching Kara’s stiff mannerisms and her awkward, barely-there smile when she’s summoned away to attend to someone else, Lena can’t see anything else. Kara looks like someone else entirely, only a stench of a person she once thought she knew. It’s not that Lena wonders why she didn’t notice it sooner, no not that. She just wants to know why she so _ eagerly _ let herself be played a fool.

It’s too busy for Kara to talk to her much at all, except the couple times she comes around to try and inch forward Lena’s water like she’s being subtle. But Lena will just down the bottom of her scotch and push the empty glass back towards her. Kara hesitates every time. She just levels Lena with a pitiful reluctance that reminds Lena of sour milk. But something in Lena’s unwavering glare, even despite her unfocused, drunken haze, always prompts her to pour another.

Not much later, it sinks in how long it’s been since Lena sat here like this, since she last came into Roulette just to see Kara. Idly waiting for Kara to deal with her other patrons at the bar, patient to be showered with attention, she always thought it meant something more. She thought Kara singled her out because she was interested in her, that she was different from everyone. She thought Kara always shaved off a few extra seconds for her wherever she could because she was special.

Well. She was special, apparently. Just not like that.

Each drink seems smaller than the first, but she takes it. She can’t even feel the burn of the scalding drink anymore, it dribbles down her throat like water and the warmth in her gut isn’t exactly pleasant but it doesn’t feel like nausea anymore either.

It’s more stifling than anything, all-consuming, and inexplicably it only makes Lena want to fan its flames even more.

By the time she finishes her fourth drink, waiting for Kara to come back down and serve her another, it’s getting late and the numbers are finally dwindling. It’s pushing on midnight, maybe it’s later, she’s not sure, doesn’t care enough to check. Despite the heavy weight of her eyelids and the fact that if she tries to stand in the next few minutes she might land on her ass, despite all that — she’s never seen the world more clearly.

This sort of conflict, the messy glances Kara shoots her and Lena’s resolute stare back, it’s all just a glitch in their timeline. There’s not a greater point to all of this. There’s no grand purpose for them meeting like there was an essential, valuable lesson for Lena to learn in her journey. 

There’s just the one essential truth it all narrows down to.

Kara reappears in front of her, and instead of refilling the glass again, she pulls it away.

Lena sits up straighter. “No, I’ll take another.”

Kara’s mouth twists into a grimace, and Lena can’t make sense of the pitiful look she casts at Lena with such concern, as if there’s any use still pretending Lena ever mattered to her.

“Look, Lena, I… I don’t think—”

“It’s your job, right?” Lena spits. “You literally have one damn job, and it’s to pour me a drink.”

This is survival.

Kara flinches at the harsh tone, her nose wrinkling, and if Lena didn’t know any better she’d say that she was about to cry. 

“Well, two jobs, I suppose.” Lena leans back with crossed arms. “But you’ve already done enough for me with the other one, don’t you think?”

Kara sucks her bottom lip between her teeth, glancing down at her hands. After a moment, she pours one last drink. As she sets the bottle back on the shelf behind her, she looks over to her side, calls out softly to Lucy. When the other bartender catches her eye with a raised eyebrow, Kara nods vaguely at Lena. There’s an unspoken understanding between the two of them. It makes Lena chuckle under her breath when she realizes what exactly it is, when Lucy starts checking on the guests in Kara’s half of the bar. 

Kara leans forward, propping her hands against the bar edge so that she can lower her voice but not close enough to set Lena on edge.

She opens her mouth, but Lena beats her to it.

“So they all knew, then?” 

At Kara’s confused look, Lena inclines her head back down towards Lucy, and the blonde’s expression darkens.

Clenching her jaw, Kara only just barely meets her eye. “Not everyone. Just, um… Lucy and Alex. Kelly knew a little bit. James sort of knew something was going on but… not everything. Don’t be mad at them. I mean, when they found out, they all tried to talk me out of it, you shouldn’t — it was all me.”

Lena laughs, sudden and sharp. “I’m sorry, is that supposed to make me feel better? That it wasn’t obvious to you from the beginning, that you needed someone to spell it out for you?”

Kara flinches, but she quickly masks it over and nods, her voice small. “Right. Um, you have every right to be upset, I understand, I’m not going to—”

“Upset?” Lena sits forward abruptly, the spin of the red lights making the room tilt. “You think I’m upset, that this is a one-time lapse in judgement I’ll get over in a week?”

“No, no of course not, Lena I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

Lena scoffs. “Oh darling, no. This is not about forgiving you, it’s about realizing I never should have trusted you in the first place.”

Kara’s mouth crumples, if only for a second before it clears again. “You’re right, okay? I know. I should have told you sooner, I shouldn’t have taken it so far, and that’s my fault.” 

“No you shouldn’t have fucking _ done _ it. You never should have come to me in the first place, you never should have let me believe you didn’t know who I was, you never should have given me this false sense of security like it wasn’t all a lie and you never should have pretended to care about me.”

“Okay, _ that _ is not true, I always—”

“Everything I did I only did because of you!” Lena fractures as the suffocating rush of anger crashes down on her, her voice cracking like glass.

A few heads down the bar turn down towards them at her raised tone, but Lena barely notices them, only watches the confusion slowly drip down Kara’s face.

“You… you what?”

But she can’t stop this broiling fury inside her rearing its ugly head, the lash of anger so potent that she only sees red. The only endurance Lena knows, the only armor that’s never let her down, is this. 

“I moved to this city because you’re the one who discovered Lex’s crimes, I only even thought to call Sam about a job because I actually wanted to impress you instead of admitting I had no idea what I was doing in my life, the cure I discovered never would have happened if you hadn’t brought me here, and the only reason I had even an ounce of faith in myself was because I thought you believed in me too. Every actual good thing I’ve tried to do has just been a consequence of you.”

Lena’s bottom lip trembles, and she digs her nails into her palm to will it away.

“I came here so that for once, just once in my life, I’d prove I could do something on my own, I would make my own name for myself. Not because I was filling in some sort of predetermined plan laid out for me, and not because someone else thought I couldn’t do it.” 

“Lena, that’s not… that’s not true.” Lena looks up to see Kara’s eyes damp and swelling. “It doesn’t matter what I’ve done. All of this, all your work, the person you are, that’s _ you. _ It’s nothing to do with me.”

“Yeah,” Lena drawls, deflating exhaustedly with a grim smile. “Except what’s really fucked up is that I probably wouldn’t have done any of it if it weren’t for you. So where does that leave me?”

Kara regards her carefully, and something she sees in Lena’s face must assuage her because she strides down the end of the bar, lifts up the divider. Lena finds herself laughing as Kara comes up beside her, the ridiculousness of this entire situation, and it’s only that much funnier when Kara settles on a chair one down from her. She laughs because on the one hand, she wants to scream at her, tell her to stay away from her and she wants to storm out of here and save her dignity and her pride, but.

But.

Kara runs her hands over the knees of her dark, liquor-splashed pants, and she struggles to hold Lena’s gaze like the coward she is.

“I think you would have,” Kara says carefully. “Maybe I… I made you realize what you wanted to do a little quicker, but all you’ve done, that wasn’t me. All you ever wanted was to do good, you would’ve done that some way or another, with or without me. I never doubted that for a second.”

“I wish that were true. Because then it’d be less selfish for me to wish that I’d never met you.”

A beat, a silence, Lena’s not sure she wants to see Kara’s face this time.

She clears her throat when Kara doesn’t answer. “CatCo is still posting the story, I presume?”

“Yeah. As far as I know.” The blonde scratches her nose, and Lena watches her peripheral how Kara kicks her feet absently at the air. 

There was a time Lena would find this cute, endearing. Now it just grinds on her nerves like a heel to the gravel.

“But it’s not—” Kara starts, her head lifting sharply. “It’s not anything bad, I want to make sure you know that.”

“You really think I care what it says?” Lena laughs. “The point is you wrote it.”

“I know.”

Lena goes for another sip at the drink, but it’s finally dawning that drunk doesn’t feel good anymore, how denial isn’t as cute as its cracked up to be, and she can already taste the sharp migraine of humiliation she’s going to feel tomorrow. With surprisingly steady hands, Lena finally pulls her black credit card and sets it on the hard surface.

“You can close me out.”

Kara sighs, already shaking her head. “You really don’t—”

“Just run the damn card,” Lena mutters, rubbing her eyes blearily as she slides it over.

After a fat, dreadfully long silence, Kara eventually takes the card, and makes back behind the bar to run it. When she returns, she comes back beside Lena, but this time she takes the seat closest to her, and Lena doesn’t know what to make of that. There’s only the solace of how she at least trusts herself to not make the same mistake again, no matter how many drinks are in her, no matter how Kara thinks she can manipulate her.

She holds the card back out to her, and Lena stares at it blankly. Taking the hint, Kara sets it down on the bar, and Lena waits a beat after Kara’s hand has retracted before scooping it back up. She’s offered no merchant receipt to sign and leave a tip, and honestly Lena’s not sure what she would even leave, so she ignores it. But maybe she’s just too drunk to care at this point, and her skin is itching for a cab home and her own bed, to sleep this stupid night away, pretend she won’t regret this tomorrow as much as she knows she will.

As she wobbles to her feet, careful to scoot her seat back first so as to avoid Kara’s knees, the blonde sighs.

“Why did you come?”

Lena only blinks her at, head spinning with a headrush.

“If you hate me so much, why did you come?”

Lena laughs, far more tired now than she’s ever remembered feeling. “Think I thought it’d make me feel better, to say this all to your face. That if I could make you hurt even a fraction as much as I have, it’d be worth it.”

“Was it?”

“I don’t know. Was the paycheck worth it?”

“What can I do?” Kara blurts out, suddenly painted with a frantic desperation that makes Lena flinch, because that face will forever be tainted for her now, that raw emotion, it’s like plunging into a snapshot of everything she’d rather forget. 

“What can I do to prove to you that, that I...”

At Lena’s dangerous, scathing glare, Kara hesitates.

“Lee, I’ll do anything. I’ll tell you anything you want to know, I’ll show you everything, I’ll give you _ everything _ I have. And I — I won’t take this job, if that’s what it takes, if that’s what I have to do.”

It’s not beautiful or loving, this supposed devotion to make things right, to turn this trajectory back around. It’s just a reminder of how Lena was let down, how at the end of the day Lena was just the one who betrayed herself.

“Because I won’t choose this stupid job over you. Not you, Lena.”

“You already did.”

Lena turns to leave, to leave Kara behind her forever, to let go of this and move on for good, but she stops, suddenly, at the look on her face.

It’s not quite hope — or well, maybe it is, because Lena doesn’t dare think she knows her well enough to read her anymore. But it’s expectant, longing, waiting for an impossible.

“I don’t know if this isn’t already obvious, but in case it’s not,” Lena says thickly, her chest suddenly hot and constricted. “Don’t contact me. Don’t call me, don’t send your sister, don’t show up at my work. There isn’t an exception or a loophole to this, I don’t want a grand gesture. I just never want to see you again.”

She makes it to the door this time, without looking back.

Tomorrow’s broadcast is set to bring clear skies and sunshine.

She has less than twenty-four hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on the bright side i'm on vacation
> 
> ps listen to you ruin me by the veronicas :)


	14. i'm just another dream you'll wanna forget

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you thought i was an amateur about science and medicine, u should see me try and talk about business

**eighteen months later**

As the camera lights flash, endless like the smattering of stars haunting the sky, Lena pulls the blonde quickly along. She’s milking up the attention, her date is, waving jovially to the crowd with a slow gait down the concrete steps of the theater. It’s almost cute, Lena thinks, how she adores being adored, how she’s friendly enough to the paparazzi for the both of them, and no one will notice how Lena tugs on her elbow to usher them more hurriedly to the waiting car. 

Almost cute.

They’re coming from a movie premiere, one Lena never even wanted to go to, not with the mountain of work she has left to do gathering dust in her office. But, begrudgingly, she does have to admit she’s having a good time, that the blonde on her arm doesn’t have an infectious laugh, that her low, sarcastic remarks throughout the film to Lena aren’t a bit amusing.

Lena tells her as much, once they make into the back of the limo. The door clips shut behind the actress, who runs her hand back through her carefully made-up hair, jostling the hairspray and the bobby pins, and the vehicle pulls away from the curb.

“I don’t know how you did it,” Lena starts, settling back into the leather as the shadowed scape of city through the car windows begins to race by. “But I did somehow manage to enjoy myself tonight.”

“Yeah?” The corners of the blondes’ eyes crinkle, in a distantly familiar way, and she laughs. “Told you I can be fun.”

The other woman scoots across the seat, slipping her arm along the curved backrest behind Lena’s head, and Lena’s smile begins to falter. Before she can think twice about it, her vision is going cross-eyed and the woman’s face is dizzyingly close to hers. And then it dips, a delicate mouth pressing just an echo of a kiss along her jaw.

“Is this okay?” she asks, her warm breath puffing against Lena’s skin and causing a scatter of goosebumps down her neck, colder than the ice in her gut.

Lena doesn’t stop her, and she certainly doesn’t remember.

Just as the blonde’s hand inches from her own lap onto Lena’s, over her knee, the car pulls to an abrupt stop and the side door is being yanked open.

Before the woman can object to the driver or demand an answer for their stop, a figure appears at the car door, only visible from the waist down.

“Oh please,” a low-pitched, feminine voice drawls. “This is not what we paid you for.”

Lena’s publicist, sharp cheekbones and dangerous, flat eyes, ducks into the vehicle to slide across the seat opposite the couple.

The blonde actress, who Lena started the night knowing her name but now it distractedly escapes her, naturally looks confused. But when she glances to Lena for support, all she finds is an apologetic smile.

“I thought I made myself clear up front,” the older woman continues. “This is a business arrangement. You can get out here, we have another driver on the corner that will take you wherever it is that you go when you’re not drooling over executives with twice the IQ you could only ever dream of having.”

Lena pinches the bridge of her nose.

All too quickly, the blonde is ushered out of the car, and the only words Lena can make out is a rushed, “Call me!” before the door is inevitably slammed shut.

The driver wastes no time in pulling off into traffic once again, and Lena sighs. “There’s a thing called decorum, you know.”

Across the wide, lusciously carpeted divide of the limo, the older woman makes no effort to hide her flagrant apathy as she rolls her eyes.

“I’m sorry, should I beckon her back? Were you going to take her home with you, have her cook you breakfast in the morning?”

“I could have.”

“Yes, but we both know you wouldn’t.”

Scoffing, Lena reaches into the mini-fridge and pulls out a mini liquor bottle at random, unscrews the small top. “I didn’t realize I hired you to also manage my sex-life.”

“You agreed to this, Lena. You said it yourself, you’re too focused to be having any actual intimate relationships, but you’re also too young not to be. The last thing we need is for the public to assume you’re undateable.”

“Undateable?” Lena huffs a laugh. “Is that really the media’s biggest concern for me now? Whether someone wants to sleep with me?”

“To be frank, yes. They want to know that despite all your brilliance, you’re still a normal, young woman with the same hopes and dreams to make the world a better place as everyone else. They want to know that you have good intentions, that you’re not like every other arrogant bureaucrat in the industry more concerned with making money than with paving a better future.”

“Not like Lex, you mean.”

Lillian narrows her eyes.

Lena just shakes her head as she pours back the clear liquor in a clean swoop, stifling her grimace. Neither woman says anything to that, and a sticky silence weighs upon them like humidity.

And then a smirk crawls up Lena’s face. “Did you just call me brilliant?”

Her mother doesn’t smile, and Lena reaches for another bottle.

xx

To say that Lena doesn’t have time to date, or even for casual flings, is putting it nicely.

Pushing open the door to her penthouse, Lena has barely hung up her keys on the hook before the lights above her automatically flood the foyer.

“Welcome home, Ms. Luthor,” an invisible voice greets her, cool as silk. “Did you enjoy the movie?”

Sweeping her hair back over her shoulder, Lena leans down to pull off her heels. “It was fine, Hope. Any messages?”

“You have eleven missed calls and six voicemails. Would you like me to play them?”

“Who are they from?” Lena asks as she struts up the marble steps ahead of her, the walls of the entryway spanning out to reveal a much larger, more open living space. More lights automatically come on over her path, revealing the generous layout of expansive, travertine floors, dark and sleek. As Lena strides by the windows, there’s a quiet click, and the shutters slowly rise, withdrawing into a panel above and revealing a staggering wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. 

“One voicemail from Mr. Edge, two voicemails from Mrs. Luthor, one voicemail from Ms. Graves, one voicemail from Ms. Arias, and one voicemail from a Ms. Strayd.”

“Who’s that last one?”

“Miss Lyra Strayd. She accompanied you home last Friday.”

Right, Lyra, that’s her name. The girl Lena actually managed to bring over the threshold of her doorway, came so far as dangerously wandering hands and an unzipped dress before she panicked and sent her off. 

No, Lena has plenty of time for these things, surprisingly. Despite the avalanche of work she’s had to get done in the last year, how often she’s gone running back and forth across the city to make meetings and business lunches with prospective partners who never had any interest in investing, no matter how many hours she spends at her desk, the load has lightened these last few months since the latest deal, and she’s loathe to admit how much is thanks to Lillian. 

If Lena is the brilliance leading this company, Lillian has become the stable foundation. She keeps Lena focused on her goals and organized in her sanity — which is ironic, considering how much her mother drives her up the walls. But the truth is that with Lillian standing beside her to help shoulder the impossible weight of running an organization, Lena can breathe, and she can have nights off like tonight. Mind you, Lillian ensured this to help foster a very particular, precise image in the public eye, but it’s her doing nonetheless.

So yes, Lena has time for dating, for sleeping around. But she doesn’t, and it’s humiliatingly unbearable that her mother knows it. 

She’s not scared of intimacy, that’s ridiculous, she’s not about to see a psychologist or anything. She just doesn’t know how to explain that this isn’t what she wants, that she’s not interested in sex or dating, that that arena of her life no longer seems necessary.

With a sigh, Lena takes a moment to regard the view out her window, the stretch of the major urban center that still catches her off guard every time she sees it. It’s not because of how high up she is, this birds-eye view of the city that few others experience on a regular basis. It’s not the mesmerizing splash of lights laid out before her, the breathtaking cityscape. 

Metropolis is home, more so than any other city ever was at least. She’s been living here for over a year, in this very apartment on top of the world, and it’s still as unrecognizable and novel to her as the first day she moved in.

Lena turns away from the window. “Remind me to call Sam back tomorrow. Play Morgan’s message and delete the rest.”

xx

_ Sam lets out a long, impressed whistle as her heels clack across the hard tiled floors, hands on her hips and posing a powerful image in front of the large windows. _

_ “Okay, if I had a place like this waiting for me across the country, I’d totally abandon you too.” _

_ Lena rolls her eyes. “We’ve been over this. I’m not abandoning you, I’m just—” _

_ “Chasing greater prospects, trying to save the world, rebuilding an empire. Yeah, I got it. Still, I’m allowed to be salty for at least another six months.” _

_ Hands in the pockets of her jeans, she joins her best friend in front of the window. She looks out at the view, the sunny city day, the barest glimpse of the river in the distance.  _

_ Lena quickly looks away, and laughs. _

_ “Well there’s far too many rooms here, so. You’re welcome to move in anytime, I could certainly use around.” _

_ “Please, Jack nearly popped a vessel letting you go, I think he’d lose his mind if you took me with you.” _

_ “Okay, Jack himself all but begged me to leave. And besides, you spent far more time nagging me into gossiping with you most days than any actual work, he wouldn’t even notice you’re gone.” _

_ Sam’s laugh echoes across the vaulted ceilings. _

_ “Always the flatterer.” Sam turns around to take in the gaudy architecture before her, the high walls, the spiraling iron staircase, and she fixates on the indoor balcony with a smirk. “You really took a one-eighty from your last place. You finally get tired of living on the other side of the tracks?” _

_ Lena grimaces. “God, no. I wanted to rent an apartment a quarter this size downtown, it was Lillian who decided I should buy a penthouse fit for a family of four.” _

_ “Ah yes, because Lena Luthor always lets her mother make decisions for her, right?” _

_ Lena turns sharply. “Don’t.” _

_ Sam doesn’t look surprised by her short temper, the sensitivity of the subject.  _

_ There’s a total of three things that are off limits for discussion with Lena these days, ones that ignite an outburst in her like a match striking across sandpaper. Everything else is fair game, everything else Lena can handle and entertain in full stride. But Lena’s decision to work with Lillian is one of them, and Sam knows better by now than to try playing this game. _

_ Sam’s somber, accusing look melts away and she acquiesces with a droll smile. “Well. I’ll definitely be visiting every weekend with Ruby that I can. Someone has to make sure you don’t run off into the sunset with a pretty starlet this time, right?” _

xx

“I’m sorry, you want me to  _ what _ ?”

Lillian rolls her eyes, the same way she always did when she would take Lena’s headstrong opinions as adolescent dramatics, and Lena hates the way it sparks that same youthful rebellion in her. It’s an urge to prove her wrong, and not even because she believes in herself but because of an immature desperation to challenge her mother that she thought she’d long since buried.

Lena rolls her shoulders. No, she’s not a teenager anymore, she knows how to keep a level head.

Lillian helps herself to the bar at the corner of their shared office, only a conservative pour, and Lena raises an eyebrow in surprise before Lillian crosses back over and drops the glass unceremoniously in front of Lena. 

“It would only be temporary,” she elaborates with an uncharacteristically soft tone.

Lena scoffs. “We’ve only just barely settled our roots here, finally established a rapport with our local investors, won over the community’s trust. It’d look ridiculously irresponsible if I left our center of operations so soon.”

“Let me handle the PR, Lena. You don’t exactly have the best track record with publicity, do you?”

Lena grits her teeth, her glare searing, but Lillian is unphased. Although she’s reluctant to ever prove her mother right in thinking she knows Lena, she caves, and she swipes up the drink in front of her, throws it back quickly.

“Fine. Explain to me then how in the hell this even remotely makes sense.”

“The contract proceedings with Edge Global begin in two weeks, and you still haven’t settled on any of the qualified candidates I’ve shown you to represent us and start up the National City branch.”

“Because they’re all greedy, narrow-minded business sharks more concerned with their salaries than fulfilling our mission statement.”

“Or perhaps you’re too stubborn and naive to have ever learned when to delegate.”

“What’s your point, Lillian?”

With an exasperated sigh, her mother settles herself into one of the chairs in front of Lena’s desk as if she’s bored and considers this all menial. Lena refuses to let it under her skin.

“There are a total of two people in this world you trust with this organization, and they’re both in this very room.”

Lena raises an eyebrow. “That’s a bold assumption.”

“You said it yourself, we’ve established our footing here in Metropolis and the next step is expansion, and we agreed to start in National City because of the partnership with Spheerical Industries’ and to ensure sustainable funding. We’ve reached stability in record time. I stay here and maintain our current projects and relations, and you go there to get the new branch off the ground and iron out the contract agreement.”

“And why don’t you go? This is my organization, I brought it up from the ashes you left it in, I should be the one to stay.”

Lillian rolls her eyes again. “Yes dear, congratulations you’re the messiah of LuthorCorp. But you wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without me.”

“L-Corp.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s L-Corp now,” Lena repeats sharply. “And that may be so, but you would certainly still be hiding in a dark coffin somewhere if it weren’t for me. Coffin? Cemetery? Where  _ do _ vampires hang out these days?”

Lillian’s mouth purses with contempt. “Wonderful, we’ve established we need each other. With that said, you’re the head of this association, and you won’t trust anyone but the best to ensure this partnership runs smoothly. Arguably, it is a much more important affair to see this through than it is to run the ship here — the future of this organization depends on how we do in National City this next year. Who better than yourself?”

Lena laughs dryly. “Careful, it almost sounds like you’re proud.”

“I am proud of you, Lena.”

Lena holds her mother’s eye, regards the flat affect of an unamused boredom, analyzing.

Lillian quickly returns them to the subject at hand, and Lena wonders when she started holding her breath.

“You should be the one to go because you know the city. You have a personal relationship with Jack Spheer and you have established connections with other local, powerful business moguls like Maxwell Lord, Cat Grant, Andrea Rojas. They care about you, you’re the face of this organization.”

Lena grits her teeth at the mention of CatCo’s CEO, refuses to acknowledge the underlying bite to Lillian’s sarcasm in mentioning her name. 

“Moreover,” her mother continues. “You were going to have to go back by the end of the summer regardless.”

Lena fixates her with a quick, warning scowl, a clear demand to not continue that line of discussion, but Lillian ignores it.

“You have the award ceremony, and it’ll do us well for you to re-immerse yourself—”

“I told you I’m not going.”

There are a total of three things that are off limits with Lena. The award is one of them.

Lillian exhales slowly, impatience dripping from her breath like acid. “I will not argue with you about this again. There’s no greater display of arrogant thanklessness than not attending a service thrown in your honor, raising money for  _ your _ nonprofit, and we don’t even have to drop a dime for the preparation expenses.”

“There’s a dozen other people just as necessary to the finding of that cure, where’s their recognition?” Lena counters hotly.

“So I’ll write a thank-you note into your speech about all of the nobodies that helped you, I don’t care. Quit being a child and stop pretending this is about nobility.”

There’s nothing more sour than the burning humiliation of acknowledging that Lillian is right.

Lena shakes her head bitterly. “Finding someone to run operations in National City was supposed to be a permanent position, it will take at least a year if not longer to establish a groundwork there. I’d hardly call that temporary.”

“So you stay as long as it takes, and you can come back when you’ve found someone to replace you.”

Lena digs her chin into her fist, wishing for a single rebuttal that would force Lillian to drop her hand but knowing there isn’t one. There isn’t another option, nothing that makes better sense than this. And it’s true, there’s only two people she would even remotely trust to make this transition work, and she can’t imagine Lillian existing in National City, much less conducting business with Jack and being the face on display for press conferences. That’s always Lena, she’s the one in the public eye, she’s on the forefront, even if Lillian has a nauseating amount of sway in the words that comes out of her mouth.

She clears her throat “When do I leave?”

“Ideally, someone would’ve been there a month ago. Morgan Edge is known for many things, and patience is not one of them.”

“So I’m going to take a wild guess that you’ve already booked my itinerary, then.”

Lillian’s slow grin is wryly pleased. “I always knew you were smart, Lena, despite what you may think. Your flight leaves in the morning.”

xx

Sam greets her at the airport of course, with an obnoxious display of balloons and holding a hand-painted banner with Ruby that reads  _ welcome home! _

Lena levels them both with a dry look as she approaches, her suitcases wheeling behind her. “You know this isn’t permanent.”

Sam is already tugging her into a bone-crushing hug. “Not if I have anything to do about it.”

She gave up her apartment here when she left, obviously. While Sam was more than happy to house Lena in her time here, and even Lena herself was partial to agreeing, Lillian had adamantly gone ahead and booked Lena up in a long-term suite in a hotel uptown. To be fair, the national chain was one of L-Corp’s newest investors, and so there was a considerable discount on her extended stay, offering luxury amenities at a generous price. Lena was honestly a little impressed that Lillian for once wasn’t being her usual extravagant self, because it was a sensible deal. So she didn’t put up much of a fight and relented with only a vague wave of her hand.

But of course when she saw the room, she realized it was still the same old Lillian.

“God, I wish I were you sometimes,” Sam sighs as the private elevator doors part open to the interior of a fully-furnished suite, revealing renaissance-gold tarnishings and Greek-inspired frameworks. They step off onto the gleaming tiled floors, slowly coming down the long hallway, and the living room opens into a round, elegant room seeming more fit for the set of a 16th century period piece than a suite for one person who will spend more time on the outside of it than in.

Ruby immediately takes off at a full sprint, skipping through a pair of double white doors that swing in her wake, the pattering of quick feet the only indication as to where she’s gone off to. Sam shouts after her as she struggles to set down the bags in her arms, and Lena laughs.

It’s still far too flashy for Lena’s tastes, despite how similar it is to how she once lived years ago. God, it’s almost ridiculous to imagine the places she and Siobhan used to live in, the pompous hotels in celebration of her girlfriend getting better roles and Lena becoming more indulgent with her own unfathomable, useless wealth. It feels like another lifetime ago, living on the road with the actress and drinking champagne that cost in the upper hundreds of dollars simply because they could. 

Maybe some things never really change.

xx

_ “Well. Can’t say this doesn’t come as a surprise.” _

_ Lena swallows passed the thickness of her dry mouth, the sticky peel of whiskey-coated lips as she stands outside Siobhan’s door, stone-faced. _

_ Siobhan’s lips are pressed into a wicked, amused smile as her eyes rake over Lena slowly, and she can only imagine how horrid she looks. Disheveled, misshapen hair that desperately needed a cut two months ago is ridden with split ends and grown out layers. The bags under her eyes are always prominent these days, impossible to forget with Lillian constantly nagging her about appearances, and Lena has half a mind to wonder if the exhaustion is incurable at this point. Smudged mascara, lipstick rubbed off on the rims of too many drinks, and smelling like a dive bar, Lena wonders when she gave up on her dignity. _

_ The thing is — she has a theory, a hypothesis, one that she desperately needs to prove wrong.  _

_ “Are you going to invite me in?” Lena asks flatly. “Or did you just let me up for the theatrics of closing the door in my face?” _

_ Siobhan grins, leaning against the doorframe with crossed arms. “Oh I missed that Luthor snark, glad all this fame hasn’t squashed that out.” _

_ Lena clenches her jaw. “Is she here?”  _

_ Siobhan’s eyes widen, coy and sarcastic. “Is who here?”  _

_ “You know who.” _

_ “Aw, don’t be jealous Lena, not now. You know how hard I’d always try to get your attention like that?” _

_ “Yes, actually.” _

_ “Mm, better late than never I guess.”  _

_ As Siobhan continues to just smile at Lena like she’s the same moldable plaything from years ago, ready to abide blindly by any of her games, Lena drops her chin and shakes her head. _

_ “Whatever, forget it, this was a bad—” _

_ “Sophie’s away at a festival this weekend.” The actress steps aside, and props the door further open. “You want a drink?” _

_ She doesn’t, and she shouldn’t, but of course she takes the offer.  _

_ They’re lounged across a couch Lena doesn’t recognize — it must be new, all white leather and untouched immaculacy — talking softly over crudely thrown-together rum and diet cokes. Lena’s never liked rum, and Siobhan knows this, she used to be better about ordering or making drinks for Lena, and she can’t help but wonder if it’s intentional. _

_ After a dull catch-up of useless small-talk discussing the weather, the city, Siobhan’s latest project, the other woman smiles softly. She reaches out to brush a lock of hair behind her ear, and Lena revels in how she doesn’t immediately want to shrug her off, the glimmer of something stirring low in her stomach. _

_ “How are you, babe? Really.” _

_ Lena swallows thickly under that gaze, that same spark of gentle affection that attracted her to Siobhan when they met as the actress runs her thumb slowly across her bottom lip. “I’m great, haven’t you heard?” she asks sarcastically. “I’m the ‘nation’s overlooked saving grace for healthcare.’” _

_ “Yeah, did hear about that story. Sorry, I mostly just skimmed it.” _

_ “Oh no, that’s just the latest pitch Lillian is trying to sell. Don’t— Don’t worry about it, I couldn’t care less about that thing.” _

_ The soft hand on her mouth stills before it falls away. “What do you mean?” _

_ “I mean, whatever, I didn’t read it either.” Lena looks away and down at her drink, cursing her loose tongue and kicking herself for bringing this up at all when it’s the last thing in the world she wants to talk about.  _

_ Siobhan laughs, sitting up straighter. “Hold on, people said that thing was a practical tribute of worship for you, it basically painted Jesus as a cheap tourist shop souvenir next you, and you’re telling me you didn’t even read it?” _

_ “No, I don’t waste my time reading clickbait, thanks.” _

_ Siobhan bursts out with an even harder laugh. “Fuck, Luthor, you really are something else. I never thought you were vain, but this just takes modesty to a whole new level. You know I made an actual Tumblr account just to track what people are saying about me?” _

_ “Is that supposed to surprise me?” _

_ The actress playfully swats her thigh, and Lena is both delighted and dreadful to find she doesn’t mind her touch. _

_ This is it, the evidence she needs. _

_ Lena sets her drink down on the glass coffee table before she slides closer to Siobhan, crossing her legs so that her calf rests against hers in unmistakable demonstration of her intentions. _

_ Siobhan’s smile bleeds with the thrill. This time, when she pushes Lena’s hair from her face, her hand lingers at the edge of her jaw, and her skinny fingers press into the tendons of her neck. It’s not rough, but it’s not soft, and it’s not like— _

_ It’s not particularly remarkable. Siobhan leans in and kisses her, and Lena kisses her back. She tastes like diet cola and expensive liquor, and her hands quickly drop to Lena’s waist, pulling in obvious request. _

_ This is her scientific method, this is how she proves she’s not broken, this is where the lust and passion glow inside of her and burst out of her chest like unadulterated want. That feeling, that desire, the interest, it’s not dead and Lena’s not scarred. Whatever it is that’s gone — she can find it again. The inability to connect with women at parties or the dates Lillian hires for events, it’s not because there’s something wrong with her, no, there was just never the right click. Siobhan was the love of her life at some point, something that looked like it at least. Lena would have done anything for her. This elusive  _ thing _ she can’t seem to find with anyone else, no matter how hard she tries, it’s not because she’s broken or lost.  _

_ And kissing Siobhan is the chance to prove that to these greater mocking skies.  _

_ But then it dawns on her that the warmth in her stomach isn’t butterflies but only sticky old nausea, and the sensitivity of her skin isn’t infatuation but just the tingling restlessness of anxiety. _

_ Lena rips her mouth away and scrambles off her lap. “I’m sorry, I — I can’t do this.” _

_ Siobhan doesn’t follow her, and it’s humiliating that she doesn’t even look surprised. The actress only wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and slowly slumps forward, reaching for her drink. As quickly as her excitement to see Lena had perked up, Siobhan sinks back into boredom and takes a thick gulp. _

_ “Look, if that’s not what we’re gonna do, then you should probably…” _

_ Mid-fumbling for her jacket, Lena whirls back on her. “Then what? Get lost? You really only let me in just because you thought I wanted a quick fuck?” _

_ “Isn’t it?” Siobhan laughs darkly. “Don’t tell me you came just to reminisce about the good old days and catch up, baby you’ve always been a shitty liar.” _

_ With a hammering chest and shaking hands, Lena haphazardly manages to button up her peacoat, and much later when she tredges home she’ll realize that the buttons aren’t properly aligned and she does indeed look as stupid as she feels. But for now, she only flounders down at her ex-girlfriend, struggling to explain herself. _

_ Because it’s true, she did only come for something like that, even if only to prove a theory. It just ended up not being the result she was looking for. _

_ “Did you ever cheat on me?” Lena blurts out instead, a muffled sense of guilt for the woman who put the shining ring on Siobhan’s finger. _

_ Siobhan shakes her head and stands, swiping up Lena’s unfinished drink and downing it herself. Lena thinks she won’t answer her, she’s already stalking to her small kitchen to dump the glassware, but the woman stops and turns around, her eyes flat and bored. _

_ “Didn’t you?” she asks tiredly. _

_ Lena doesn’t cry until she’s back over the threshold of her large, echoing, dark penthouse with a view of the city unlike any other, she doesn’t cry until the loneliness of a home that was never hers swallows the last of her resilience. _

_ Maybe it is gone, and maybe it isn’t something that comes back. _

xx

Working her red, bottom lip between her teeth mindlessly, Lena scrolls slowly through an email on her dimmed phone screen. She follows the man in front of her blindly, taking distracted steps forward as the line inches on.

Normally, Lena’s not one for buying her coffee premade. She’s gotten used to grinding her own beans, the soothing churn of the whirring machine that swallows her kitchen with its delicious, roasty aroma, and spooning it herself into a glass french press while the kettle on the stove hisses up to a whistle. It started when she lived in National City before, of course. Walking into coffee shops in the middle of the day was always begging for disaster, and so Lena quickly became accustomed to drip coffee and store-bought grounds. But when she moved back to Metropolis, she tinkered. 

She tried an espresso machine of her own, because she’s always loved a good cortado, but managing the cleanup of all the equipment pieces was unnecessarily tedious, and she found it was more nit-picky than she wanted to be so early in the morning before her first shot of caffeine. She then went into an equally extravagant but quite opposite direction of brewing, and she invested in a siphon brewer. Supposedly the appeal was that the water never boiled, stayed just a few degrees shy of it, and this somehow would lend to a more satisfying, richer taste. It also was just pleasing to look at, reminded her of her days in the lab that had been so recent yet never felt further away, because she’d traded in all the lab analyses and experiments for financial reports and investment deals. And while the coffee was delicious, Lena couldn’t taste much of a difference, and so the siphon just a remembrance of something she’d left behind.

French presses always seemed lazy. An easy route for someone too cheap to invest in a drip machine but wanting the modern air of hipster rusticity in their favor. But Lena was on a mission, and she tried it out one morning, and found that it… tasted about the same as the rest. But it was easy, and quick, and there was an inexplicable satisfaction to plunging the lever so that the filter slowly sunk over the dark mesh of coffee grinds, it was mesmerizing in a way that sometimes Lena would stand there for minutes on end just staring at the tendrils of steam curling from the indented spout of the glass, inhaling the earthy, bitter scent. Something about the quiet ease of it, the way there were no outlets and it was just a simple glass jar with a precise filter, it spoke to Lena. It’s a bit cheesy, she knows. But soon scooping a cup of beans into the grinder and shuffling them into the glass beaker became one of her favorite routines, something hers alone, something Lena loved for herself. It wasn’t a habit someone else inspired, a copy of another person’s interests because she had none of her own.

These days, there’s not much Lena has just for herself. Not the future of her organization, not the deals they make, not any of the decisions about who she sees and what she wears. 

Her morning coffee, freshly prepared by her, was one of them, and she held it very dear to her.

But this morning she’d woken up late, and she’d had to scramble out of bed and into the first ironed pantsuit her fingers could grab if she wanted to make her early meeting with Jack even remotely on time. He’d understand if she was late, hardly hold it against her. He’d certainly been late more than a few times for these things, always rushing in and out with a fortress of a company to run, one that’s only grown exponentially since Lena left.

Still, it’s in the principle of the thing, and so Lena raced past her french press this morning, sparing only a brief, wistful look on her way out the door. Which is how she ends up here, at a coffee shop down the block from SI, catching up on as many emails as she can.

Currently she’s stuck reviewing Morgan Edge’s comments on the latest contract drawn up between Lena, Jack, and his own legal team, and Edge has riddled it with critiques and blackouts. Points where the delegation of accountability is too vague, an adjustment to this arbitration requirement would save them both more money, a confidentiality clause here would only be a liability further down the line.

Apparently explaining to her thick-headed lawyer that Jack Spheer is an old and dear, trusted friend of hers was only a greater cause for concern in this business deal. She can already feel the first licks of a migraine creeping up behind her eyes, and as she thankfully comes up next in line to order, she pockets her phone.

“Almond cortado, please.” 

She gives her first name for the order and the young woman hands her back her credit card, and after Lena drops a green bill into the tip jar, as she starts to turn away, there’s a light gasp from behind the counter.

Lena glances up, an instinctual ice-cold dread clenching her heart as the barista’s eyes flare with recognition.

“Wait, are you — oh my god, are you Lena Luthor?”

She considers lying, but the shock of sweeping light-headedness makes it harder to think.

“I— Yes. Yes, I am.” 

To her surprise, the younger woman’s face splits into a beaming smile, and she heaves an excited breath, immediately fumbling for something beyond Lena’s sight. “Oh my  _ god,  _ I’m so sorry, this is probably so annoying but, could I— do you mind if—?” 

A sharpie and scratch piece of paper are being held out to her, and Lena blinks.

“Can I have your autograph?”

Lena stares dumbly at the objects for only a moment before she gathers herself and takes the pen.

“Oh god, thank you, my sister’s gonna flip — she’s like your number one fan, seriously. Ever since you brought L-Corp to life she’s been obsessed with like, going out and volunteering for stuff, she makes our parents drive her all over the city trying to get involved in whatever drive or event is going on. She literally never shuts up about you, says she wants to be just like you someday.”

The teenager laughs nervously, and Lena looks up at her in astonished disbelief. She can’t put a finger to the elixir of relief that seeps through her, this subtle but poignant elation, and Lena can barely manage a response.

She’s used to being recognized, to reporters asking for a quote on the organization, people asking her for a photo when she’s on the hip of an actress and walking a red carpet out of a premiere. 

This? This is new.

“What’s your sister’s name?” Lena manages, her throat dry.

“Oh, it’s Cara.”

The girl laughs, and Lena’s hand freezes over the paper.

“She’s nine, by the way, she’s not like, insane or anything.”

Lena clears her throat and softens her smile. “With a ‘K’?”

“No, a ‘C.’ Wow, she’s seriously gonna lose her mind, thank you so much, I’m really sorry to bother you, I know you probably have a million better things to be doing right now.”

With a quick scribble of her signature, Lena hands the slip back and smiles gently. “Don’t apologize at all, it’s my pleasure. Tell your sister that if she’s still looking for a job in ten years, she can shoot me a message.”

She laughs. “Right, you’ll remember that one obnoxious barista’s dork of a sister?”

Dropping her eye to the nametag on the girl’s black apron, Lena’s lips spread into a soft smile, and she adjusts the strap of her purse. “Cara and Hayley, yes, I’ll remember. I look forward to our future business endeavors.” With a small wink, Lena finally turns away from the counter.

She ends up being late anyways but Jack doesn’t mind, and Lena finds that she doesn’t either.

xx

The business side of their meeting doesn’t take too long, it never does when it’s just the two of them. They’ve long since ironed out the adjustments Edge hounded on them to make to the contract, and just finished up scheduling yet another meeting with both of their lawyers to go over everything once again.

“What do they say? Sixth time's the charm?” Jack asks dryly once he hangs up the phone and rises from his chair. “Hey, you fancy a drink?”

Lena leans back in the soft cushioned seat across from his desk, crossing her legs, and the corner of her mouth tilts upward. “At nine in the morning? Bit early, even for you. Is this what your life has come to?”

“Please, you should’ve seen me when one of my best scientists abandoned me for saving the world. Went through nearly a bottle a day.”

“Okay, honestly, you and Sam really have got to work on these abandonment issues of yours.”

Jack laughs deeply with a shake of his head, unplugging the decanter at the corner of his office, and it’s amusing to note how similar they are. He inclines it towards her again in question. 

She should probably pretend she’s grown over the course of her time in Metropolis, that she’s no longer the kind of person to drink in the middle of the day, that she’s a responsible businesswoman and the sort of mentally stable person who doesn’t need a buzz to get through her morning. She should be that person, but well, it’s Jack. They’ve talked more these last nine weeks than they ever did in the few months she worked for him, and certainly more than in their years apart after college.

Lena waves a hand. “Alright, go ahead, be a horrible influence.”

He laughs again, grinning as he palms two low-ball glasses in one large hand, swiftly pouring two thick streams of the amber liquid before he returns and hands one over. Rather than taking back his seat behind the desk, he comes beside her and sinks into the other client seat, unbuttoning his stiff blazer.

“But yes, in regards to your question, this is exactly what it’s been like lately.” He takes a quick sip at the drink and clears his throat. “The market’s been a vicious pit lately, and it’s getting ridiculously harder to keep up with all the demands, so, been having a fair share of long board meetings and late nights.”

Lena raises an eyebrow. “Almost sounds like you’re the CEO of a major research company.”

“Oh don’t start with me.” He flicks his hand with theatrical irritation, and Lena laughs, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet beneath her. She cleared an hour for her morning meeting with him, knowing full well they’d be finished halfway through, so she might as well relax.

“You know how it is,” he goes on. “Suddenly there’s a new fresh-faced entrepreneur straight out of their undergrad with the next best tech idea every week. It’s a bitch to keep up with competition like that, no matter how small their trust-fund start ups are.”

“Jack, you know we can delay this partnership as long as you need. I wouldn’t want to be another added stress if the company’s struggling.”

He waves her off. “No, this partnership is exactly what I need right now. The whole struggle is with keeping up the promise I made to keep our new devices affordable and accessible.”

Lena smiles. “And that’s exactly what my organization is all about? Got it, two birds. And here I thought it was my charming personality that persuaded you.”

“Oh yes, I forgot to mention, Lillian promised me one of those famous date nights I hear so much about. Think we’d make the front page?”

Lena groans, pitching her head low and back behind her. “God, don’t remind me. That woman has me being seen with a new date every other week, it’s exhausting.”

“Both men and women, I’ve noticed.”

“Yes, yes, she’s a changed woman now with advanced liberal beliefs. No, I’m pretty sure it’s mostly for the press following my personal politics than any actual personal growth.”

Jack laughs along with her, and they mockingly cheers to her mother. But all too soon, his face softens and his line of sight trails along slowly to somewhere just over Lena’s shoulder. She regards him curiously, waiting for whatever it is he wants to say and unsure what could make him hesitate.

“Forgive me if this is…” He pauses, licks his lips and tugs at his tie as he sits up straighter. “Are you happy?”

Lena can’t help the sharp laugh, the wide stretch of her smile, even if it’s only at the surprise. “I’m sorry?”

“I just sometimes wonder if it was right of me to push you to leave, encourage you to move on. It seemed like the right idea at the time, you know?” He scratches at his jaw, the rough scruff of his bear. “You were getting new job offers left and right, the company’s stocks were hitting an all time high with all the attention on you. I didn’t want to keep you here as a barely paid secondary researcher when you were receiving offers to run entire labs.”

Lena nods now that she understands where he’s going, and she smiles softly, even if it’s in a direction she’s reluctant to follow. “Yes, you really did fight me on it. Think if I had tried any harder to stay you were about ready to fire me yourself.”

“You’re certainly not wrong.” They both laugh, and Jack’s smile softens further. “You’ve a brilliant mind, Lena, and the world was only just starting to see it. I couldn’t live with myself if I were to hold you back from greater things. But now that you’re back, and we’re here discussing terms for a partnership, I just… I can’t help but wonder.”

“It wasn’t just you, you know. Lillian would’ve had a cow if I’d stayed.” Lena chuckles wryly at the memory, the discussions with her mother that edged closer on arguments and lectures than actual debates. “She all but got down on her knees and begged me to do something, anything with LuthorCorp.”

“A perfect time if there ever was any.”

Lena bites her lip, thinks of a time that was so rich and fruitful for her career, and yet she’s never known darker days. “Yes, I suppose it was. It was ridiculously cheap to take back over, and with all the attention on the Luthors, investments were easy enough to acquire.”

“Well, not the Luthor name exactly.”

She raises her eyebrows in question, and he continues. “I mean, no one was talking about your family, they were talking about you, and that was the basis of your popularity. People realized you were something different, somebody new.”

Lena swallows thickly, barely idles over his words that have been the signature motto of the last eighteen months of her life. It was a catchy dichotomy, this trademark of being recognized as someone outside of her family, a dream that was all she ever wanted but at the price it cost. The press jumped on it immediately, it was a fun concept to headline with and drop in interviews like they had coined it themselves. 

“So I only mean to ask, was it the right choice?” Jack rests his now empty glass against his knee with a contemplative, tender expression. “Are you happy now? Because, forgive me if I’m overstepping, but I know you weren’t then.”

Lena narrows her eyes, corner of her mouth quirking up. “Has Sam been talking to you? Is this part of a master plan to keep me in National City? Because you know this is temporary.”

Jack chuckles, leaning forward to set the glass on the edge of his desk. “Yes, that does seem to be the word on the street. But no, this has nothing to do with that. You just seem… different, and I can’t quite put my finger on whether it’s a change for the best, but I’m not sure that’s my place anyway. So again, I only ask because your assessment is the one that matters.”

“You sure about that? Lillian has a laundry-list of opinions on my life that she’d be more than happy to share with you.”

The look Jack levels her with isn’t quite pitying, it’s distant, evasive, doesn’t land anywhere concrete in it’s fluttering search over Lena’s face. Just when she thinks she might be about to pinpoint his thoughts, can find meaning in the slope of his downward cast eyes, they flick away, and Jack sighs. He stands and takes Lena’s empty glass from her loose grip.

“Don’t worry, I can take a hint, I’ll hang up the psychoanalysis.” Setting her glass beside his on the desk, he crosses around back to his own office chair, and Lena has only a moment to feel a twinge of guilt at her roundabout sarcasm before he continues. “Not that I don’t love these cheery morning meetings of ours, but hopefully this will actually be our last. ‘Till Wednesday, then?”

She could tell him that it was the right decision, leaving National City. She could tell him that taking over the family company and turning what was once a multibillion dollar cesspool of pride and greed into the force for good that it is today was the right decision. She could tell him that she loves Metropolis, that she loves feeling important and she loves not being harassed by strangers on the street and she loves being idolized by the press, that she loves feeling like she’s making a difference, that she’s helping people, that it was always the right choice and it was never a question to begin with.

There’s a million things she could tell him about her choice to leave. She could tell him that she’s worried she never learned what it means to have a home, that she was deluded anytime she thought she might have it. She could tell him that she’s not sure if it’s something she’s meant for, that in order to make a truly meaningful difference in the world she’ll have to make sacrifices, and how she worries if that includes a life of her own. 

She could tell him that heroes don’t save themselves, they save someone else.

Once she’s hooked her heels back on her feet, Lena stands and fixes Jack with a placid smile. “Yes, I’ll see you Wednesday.”

xx

The day before she and Jack have their scheduled press conference for the official announcement on their partnership, Lena is settled up on the top floor of the new L-Corp building making phone calls to new local donors. Despite the stable line of investors she has secured back in Metropolis, and the financial benefit of partnering with a company for cheaper acquisition of their front-line technology, there's never a time to slow down and Lena is nothing if not prepared.

So, if that means waking up at five a.m. to answer all her emails so that she can dedicate three hours of her day to solely making calls, so be it.

Lena has just hung up the phone with National City Bank, and is pencilling down a reminder for her assistant to call back and set up a meeting with their CFO next week, when her front door opens.

“Most people knock, you know,” Lena says dryly, not looking up from her legal pad.

Sam laughs as she drops unceremoniously on the seat across from her desk. “Yeah, well I’m not most people. You ever think about adding some color to this place?”

Lena glances around them, takes in the new white leather couch, the white marble floors, the white shelves, her gleaming white desk, and finally lands on Sam’s amused, raised eyebrows. 

“You do realize I just moved in, right?”

“Moved, huh? That implies an air of permanence, doesn’t it?”

Dropping her pen, Lena scoffs. “Are you ever going to quit with that? You never used to recycle your jokes this much.”

“I don’t know, are you ever going to own up and accept that you’re just gonna cave?”

“Not likely.”

“Ah, well, you’ve never been good at predicting the future anyway.”

Lena sighs. “What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were showing around the engineer I sent over to the labs.”

Her best friend nods slowly and purses her lips. “Yep, that I was. But I’ve been summoned to remind you not to blow off your two o’clock today.”

Lena raises an eyebrow, and immediately clicks open her calendar on her computer monitor. “Making sure I keep my meetings? Isn’t what I hired an assistant for?”

“It is, but apparently she’s terrified of you, and she called me.”

Lena laughs, trying to declutter her screen and find the docket for today. “What kind of assistant is too scared of her own boss that she thinks to call my best friend instead of just—”

She cuts off sharply when she comes across the right event in her calendar, the one that had been scheduled the day before, one that she has the vaguest memory of flippantly approving. She’d been on a conference call with Lillian and Edge, listening to the two of them bicker to no end, when her assistant had poked her head in and quietly asked if she’d be okay with squeezing in an interview today. Lena had waved her off with a quick yes, too busy trying to jump back into the conversation with her mother and lawyer while they talked over her about what was best for  _ her _ organization in a partnership that was  _ her _ idea.

And now, it sinks in, what she’s agreed to.

CatCo Interview, two p.m.

The footnote reads it’s about the press conference tomorrow, of course, looking for any hint on the announcement. Of course everyone in the media knows at this point that L-Corp and Spheerical Industries are collaborating on something, and with the acquisition of an entire building under L-Corp’s name in the heart of National City, the rumors have been rampant. Lillian said that Lena had to partake in at least one interview before then, and she hadn’t given a second thought to it until now.

Sam clicks her tongue. “So, yeah, you get it then. I’d be a little scared to remind you too.”

“Yet here you are,” Lena mutters, staring at her screen blankly. 

“She just wanted to make sure it wasn’t catching you off guard.” Sam rises to her feet, brushing the wrinkles from her slacks. “If you need me, I’ll be back at SI. Or you know, if you need an expensive bottle of scotch, I can come back with one of those too.”

“You’re really giving my assistant a run for her money.”

“She’s still new, give her a sec. You’ve got a lot of rules, Luthor, it’s hard to keep up.”

“Yes, but no one seems very keen on following them, do they?” she asks pointedly, and Same only grins in response. She quickly says her goodbyes before she leaves finally, leaving Lena alone with the rest of her to-do list of calls to make and meetings to schedule, with nowhere near enough time before two.

They’re being ridiculous, she wouldn’t blow off an interview because of some childish, stubborn candor. She knows how to be an adult and she can be mature about this, because she’s done it before.

xx

_ “Alright, your flight is scheduled for tomorrow night at nine, I’ve finished your speech for the morning press conference, I’m handling the IRS representative that’s coming by this afternoon, and your accountant is dropping off the rest of the paperwork by six.” _

_ Lena smirks around the lip of her to-go coffee and leans back in her leather seat, raises an eyebrow at her mother. “Did you book us a spa day, too?” _

_ It’s her last day in her Spheerical Industries office, most everything is packed away by now, not that she spent much time here in the first place. All that’s left is the furniture from when she first moved in, the shelves are bare and the floor clean. She’d been planning on spending it with a couple hours of quiet, a whisper of a private goodbye with her phone turned off, when Lillian had tapped on the door.  _

_ Her mother rolls her eyes. “Don’t be ungrateful. I’ve taken care of all that because there’s one thing I can’t do myself, and I need you focused.” _

_ “Oh and what’s that? Wash my hair?” _

_ “A CatCo reporter will be here in an hour, and you’re going to sit down with her.” _

_ Lena’s blood runs cold. “I thought I told you I’m not doing any interviews.” _

_ “You did.” _

_ “So then why—” _

_ “I’ve let you go nearly four months without a single interview,” Lillian says slowly. “I understand your reservations, but it’s time to grow up and move on.” _

_ “You can forget it,” Lena laughs, dropping her coffee onto her desk and staring down at it resolutely. “I’m not doing it.” _

_ “Can you retain the dramatics for just one day? I don’t have time to have this discussion again. All the reporter wants to know is about what you plan to do with the company, it’s no secret you bought it and the whole country knows you’re returning to Metropolis.” _

_ “So Andrea can tune into the conference like everyone else tomorrow, why should I talk to anyone?” _

_ “Lena. This is good publicity she’s offering.” _

_ “You really trust her to say anything good about me?” The paper of her coffee cup indents within her clenching fist. “That woman is conniving, two-faced, arrogant sociopath who’s had a personal vendetta against me for over a decade.” _

_ “And that sociopath is the one you have to thank for more than half the investors we have now. If you’d have actually read the article like I asked you to, then you might understand—” _

_ “I’m not reading the fucking article!” Lena explodes, slamming her drink onto the desk so abruptly that the lid pops off and coffee sloshes over. The whole floor of Spheerical industries can probably hear her at this point, but Lena’s fuming and too blinded by her crumbling defenses to realize, much less even care. “I don’t care what it says, I don’t care what it’s done for me, and I don’t care about the doors it opens. I bought the company because I agreed with you when you said it was my chance to do what I’ve always wanted, but I never agreed to kiss the ass of the woman who ruined my life.” _

_ “Ruined your life?” Lillian echoes with a patronizing bite. She crosses her arms, eyes narrowed as her heels pad across the carpet in slow, stilted thumps like the hammering of Lena’s heart in her ears as she approaches the edge of her desk. “Ingratitude is not a flattering color on you, Lena. I’m going to pretend this whole diva attitude is just an act for this time of the month, and I’m going to call Andrea and give her the go-ahead for the interview. The reporter is coming here. Do us both a favor, and pretend you’re not this much of a spoiled brat when they arrive.” _

_ Lillian leaves, and Lena has one hour. _

_ She’s been operating on the premise of this expectation that— _

_ Well. There is no ulterior meaning. Lena’s lipstick leaves a stain on the crumpled coffee cup, and this doesn’t represent any greater dynamic, there’s nothing scripted about this, and, certainly, Kara is not relevant here. _

_ She’s making something of herself, you see. There’s no implosion of passion, not any fat bubbling promises of grandiosity, there’s not a boom of all her aspirations coming true. There’s just the quiet of moving on with her life, without anyone else’s storm. _

_ Surely the universe wouldn’t be so sick and twisted as to send her. There’s no way, even Andrea fucking Rojas wouldn’t be that derganged. _

_ Fine, okay, Lena understands the purchase of LuthorCorp is a big deal, as is leaving National City, it’s the only actual, public thing she’s done since… well, just since. And she wasn’t foolish enough to think that it could be done without the spotlight catching her, without the critical eye of the country analyzing her every move. Despite all the good press she’s gotten, along with it comes the more judgemental and narrow-minded critiques of everything she does. Wonderful, no one assumes the worst of her because of her last name now, fantastic. But they’re still waiting with cameras pointed at the ready for the first slip. _

_ Growling under her breath, Lena rushes from her seat to the narrow window. It’s ridiculous — she just moved into this office, she hasn’t even been with SI for half a year, and she’s already leaving. Clicking her jaw to the side, she stares sightlessly at the city scape before her, the industrial concrete and chrome-lined buildings.  _

_ For god’s sake, she came to this city to hide, to bury herself from the world and start over. Who would have thought this was exactly where she would step into the limelight? _

_ Well, not step. More like dragged. _

_ It’s fine, they won’t send her. They wouldn’t send her to interview Lena, this unfathomable “they” would know better than to do that because Lena would have no qualms about slamming the door in her face. Because she would — of that, Lena is certain. _

_ It’s fine. Yes. If Kara Danvers dared to show her face in Lena Luthor’s office, she has the utmost confidence in herself that she’d politely and calmly tell her to shove it, to hell with whatever Lillian says.  _

_ As the clock ticks on, and the hour both slowly and hurriedly inches to an end, Lena chews over the possibilities. _

_ It wouldn’t even be interesting to read, if Kara interviewed her, it’d be redundant and flat. Whatever it is that Kara has to say about her was already done with her gossip-column article, the world already knows what a fool Lena is and how she opened her entire life up for the scrutiny of this amateur reporter. What the hell else would they want to hear from her? A round two? Do they want to see if Lena could be so much of an idiot as to trust her again for the third time? Fool me twice, they say, but there’s no profound line for a round three. _

_ Her own reasoning sounds ridiculous even to her, and as Eve calls up to her office to alert her that the reporter is here and riding up the elevator, Lena knows it. The truth is that an interview with Lena on the cusp of reinventing LuthorCorp, conducted by the same reporter who reignited her career, would be another front-page story for CatCo and rack up an obscene number of clicks. Because that’s what CatCo was about, not it’s hard-hitting journalism but about making a paycheck off whatever life it can suck the scandal out of. _

_ It certainly knows how to hire people with similar enough interests. _

_ So, it probably is Kara on her way up, all things considered. Lena’s a businesswoman now, and so is Andrea, and Lena would send Kara herself if it was her call. So when there’s a knock at her door, and Lena clears her throat to invite Kara inside, Lena raises her chin. _

_ Because she can do this, she’s Lena Luthor. She’s leaving in a day. In twenty-four hours, she’ll be on a flight across the country, and she won’t be looking back.  _

_ So if Kara thinks she can march into Lena’s office and beg her to stay, she’s mistaken.  _

_ Oh, how rich that would be, honestly. Lena would kill to see the look on her face when she spits on her feet and curses her for having no shame. The sheer audacity she must have to have to come in here, expecting an interview and hoping to change Lena’s mind about leaving, not only assuming that she has any right at all to ask Lena to stay but also expecting that it would make anything of a difference, that Lena would even hear her out, that Lena would care about how sorry she is and all that she could do to change her mind — the presumptuous arrogance it will show, it will be out of this world. _

_ And Lena can’t wait to prove how wrong she is. _

_ The door cracks open, and a face peaks in.  _

_ “Hi! I’m Alice Peng from CatCo. You’re Lena Luthor, right?” _

xx

When another reporter who Lena doesn’t recognize steps through the doorway fifteen months later, into an office three times as big as the one she had at SI, she’s a different person.

Because she is, Jack was right. She’s not the same pathetic drunk girl with a broken heart that left with red-rimmed eyes and lofty fantasies of saving the world out of some naive mentality of self-righteousness. She’s the woman who did what she said she would and she’s the woman who’s come back to do more. She doesn’t have a misplaced sense of self-indulgent pity, she’s not so self-centered as to think that her life is ruined or that she’s living anything short of her dream just because someone lied to her once upon a time. 

No, this girl is gone, and that chapter is over.

So maybe Lena wasn’t appropriately prepared fifteen months ago when a reporter she’d never met stepped into her small, poorly ventilated office that was still yet to even have her name on the door. Maybe she used to entertain some perverted run-through-an-airport kind of fantasy. But today she’s at the top of a building she owns, and her expectations about who is to interview her today are perfectly in check. There’s no time for reminiscing or looking back, and Lena has a future to seize, even if there are three still three things off limits for discussion.

Because one is what it took to survive. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy holidays!! love u


	15. champagne's for celebrating, i'll have a martini

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> minor tw for a mention of body image/weight standards in the running scene, starts with "the morning of the ceremony..." 
> 
> if u don't want to read it, just skip a few paragraphs to the phone call

“Hey, you’re out of milk.”

Sitting at her desk with her phone tucked into her shoulder, Lena scribbles her signature across the bottom of a performance review before she flips the page.

Slowly registering Sam’s words, she pauses. “…I never had any to begin with.”

“Well you’re still out. What time you think you’ll be home? Can you pick some up? I’m making pancakes.”

A smirk touches her mouth’s edge, and Lena fills in another report almost mindlessly. “Shouldn’t you be at home, I don’t know, taking care of your daughter?” 

“Oh she’s here too, don’t worry.”

“Don’t you have a house? It’s very cute and cozy, last I remember. Probably has milk too.”

“Yeah, but your bathtub has a jacuzzi. You know, I thought NGO directors weren’t supposed to live this lavisciously. Do your donors know they’re paying for your ‘Lena Luthor’ monogrammed bathrobes and custom-scented hand lotions?”

“That’s all Lillian’s doing, it’s just the Luthor money.” Lena tuts dryly, and then her hand pauses over the page. “I have a monogrammed bathrobe?”

“Well you did. I took it awhile ago. So, you almost done?”

Lena looks down at the three inch-thick pile of progress reports she is still yet to go through, and then a glance at her computer screen of eighty-seven new emails — forget the fact that she just cleared her inbox an hour ago. A sigh falls from her lips again when her eye drops to the clock, and it’s a quarter after nine. 

Normally, this would be nothing. Some days in Metropolis she would be at the office with Lillian until one in the morning, but something about this city tugs at her strings. She grows tired earlier, stiffer sooner, her eyes began to sting from the glare of her computer monitor only a couple hours after sunset.

Pinching the bridge of her nose, she gives one last glance over the work scattered over her desk. And then, resolutely, she tucks the documents into their folder and stands, reaching across to flick off her desk lamp.

“Yeah, I’ll be home soon.”

xx

Her suite kitchen isn’t all that large to begin with, so it’s not very surprising to find that the explosion of flour and egg shells carpets out into the dark hallway that the elevator doors open into. A stretch of light from the kitchen illuminates the mess, and as the door clicks shut behind her, a nine-year-old’s head pokes quickly around the corner ahead.

“Hi Aunt Lena! Before you say anything, it wasn’t me.” 

With a squeak, Ruby just as hastily disappears, and Lena can hear the hushed giggles and frantic whispers of their arguing as she unclips her heels.

When she comes around the corner to find Sam with a cheeky, shameless grin and Ruby hiding behind the breakfast bar, only the top of her head and a pair of brown eyes visible, all Lena has in response is the raise of a single eyebrow.

It’s a game to see who breaks first, and Ruby’s small eyes flit back and forth between her mother and Lena nervously as the silence stretches on.

And then Sam purses her lips. “So… you got the milk, right?”

Lena rolls her eyes as she drops the carton on the counter, and with a huff she turns back out of the kitchen. 

“I’m taking a shower. I want strawberries in mine or I’m kicking both of you out.”

xx

She does end up getting her strawberry pancakes, as does Ruby, before the kid ends up passed out on her couch, stomach-down and drooling into the pale gold linen. Of course, not before the the forty-minute sugar rush of sprinting around the suite, jumping on Lena’s king-sized mattress, unravelling every single one of Lena’s freshly rolled bath towels, and inexplicably losing the TV remote somewhere on the balcony. 

“Aren’t you supposed to provide her with a routine or something?” Lena asks from the breakfast bar where she nurses a glass of wine, watching the child snore on her couch. “Like, give her vegetables, enforce a bedtime, put her in her actual bed?”

Sam shrugs indifferently. “It’s fine, I’ll just make her spend all of tomorrow doing chores to put her back in her place. She wanted to hang out with you, and who am I to deny her her favorite aunt?”

“You’re an only child, and I’m your only friend.”

“Oh that’s right, you’re the popular one now.” Sam grins, narrowing her eyes. “Are all your girlfriends just begging for you to come back?”

Lena scoffs. “Please, it’s already been two months. Pretty sure they’ve forgotten all about me.”

“Two months? No it hasn’t.”

“Darling it’s August.”

“Since _ when? _ You’re saying I have to go back to school shopping already?”

Lena pats her friend on the thigh placatingly. “You’ll get through it, I promise.”

With a disgusted sigh, Sam takes a heftier gulp of her wine. 

They catch up more on how things at L-Corp are progressing. With Lillian’s strategic advertising back in Metropolis, capitalizing on the media’s adoring interest on Lena and how eager they are to know why she left, the press conference back in June was an incredible success. After announcing the general partnership, Lena and Jack had together given a ten-year blueprint on how they plan to change the game of healthcare nationwide, putting Spheerical Industries’ leading technology in public hospitals across the country, based entirely on L-Corp’s funding and outreach. With the foundation of investors L-Corp has built up the last year, they can now take off the ground and begin the long road of providing accessible healthcare to clinics, hospitals, and whole communities. Their initiative with SI’s tech begins in National City for the first year, and then to Metropolis the second, and the next eight years will be spent tackling their vision of integrating essential needs interventions into care all across the country.

Suffice to say, Lena’s exhausted.

“Yeah, I bet. But do you have any idea how proud I am of you?”

Lena rolls her eyes. “Yes, you just about remind me every week.”

“I mean it. You’ve done in a year what takes most people nearly half a decade, forget the partnership deal alone.”

“Yes, well, it helps that you, me, and Jack all did Jell-O shots back in the day. Made it a lot easier to coax him to my side. Not to mention there was actually something resemblant of a company left to LuthorCorp when I bought it, so. I had help.”

A warm hand covers her own, and Lena looks up to see the serious weight of Sam’s gaze.

“Just because you had help doesn’t mean you aren’t the one to thank. You’re doing great things, and you deserve the recognition.”

With a sharp look, Lena smiles wryly. “Funny. Almost sounds like you might be talking about something else.”

“Of course I am, but you have too many fucking rules so I have to jump through hoops to say what I want to say.”

Lena drags her index finger slowly across the lip of her glass, biting the tip of her tongue.

She was nominated for a Lasker Debakey back in September of last year, for the work she and her team did at SI in finding a cure for the demyelinating disease that backlashed from the Neoremedium.

Forget the fact that neither Sam or Jack were nominated, despite how Sam was the one who discovered anything was wrong and Jack was the head of the damn project. Forget that it was thanks to Imra’s advanced and cutting-edge CAR-T system that Lena was even able to bring any of her theories to fruition, forget that Jess was by her side every single day from sunrise to sunset for _ weeks, _ forget that Lena only knew what to do because Lex spelled it out for her, forget the fact that she was only working at Spheerical Industries at precisely the right time to even become involved in the research because of _ her. _

Forget the fact that Lena doesn’t know how to make it any clearer how she doesn’t deserve it.

But, bitterly, Lena knows Lillian is right. It doesn’t matter, it’s as inane as pointing fingers in the dark at this point, because the foundation isn’t going to change their mind just because she’s having a morality crisis. She was selected early this year, and along with an entirely unnecessary ceremony dedicated in her honor, is a fundraiser for L-Corp, completely backed by the Lasker foundation. She just has to show up, say a few words, and that’s it. About eighty percent of the proceedings will go directly to her organization, on top of a personal honorarium of two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Lena’s never dreaded anything more.

She catches Sam’s eye softly. “You can say it, if you want. I’ll give you a freebie.”

Her friend’s eyes narrow, the corner of her mouth draws into a tight smirk. “You feeling okay? You eat anything fishy these last couple days?”

When Sam raises the back of her hand to Lena’s forehead, she swats her away laughing. “It’s in two weeks anyway, but fine. I take it back, never speak to me again.”

“Okay, look, I won’t say anything about the award. But I will say that it’s reassuring you’re finally starting to come around to it. I know it hasn’t been easy.”

Lena chuckles. “Honestly, think I’m just too tired to care right now.”

“Mm, lucky for you that’s an easy fix. C’mon, go to bed, I’ll clean this up.”

With a grateful hug, Lena easily agrees, and she loosely pulls away before she pads off to her room. Despite the mess and the surprise of unexpected visitors, a disruption to Lena’s polished routine, she can’t say she minds. She’s not lonely in Metropolis, not like that, but she will admit that it’s nice to come home to a kitchen light on and the sweet music of unweighted laugher. Sam makes it easy for her — Lena’s not blind, she knows when she’s being treated carefully, when someone is going out of their way for her, and from anyone else she’d probably bite off the hand reaching to feed her, slap away these cheap scraps of pity they offer. 

After lazily brushing her teeth and slipping under her velvet duvet, Lena relaxes. With Sam it’s different, it’s easy to lean on her for an hour or two with something like peace of mind, because if there’s anyone she can let herself close her eyes for just a blink of reprieve, it’s her.

xx 

_ The distant sound of the front door clicking shut jolts her from her stunned trance, and they’re alone once more. _

_ “So you’re talking to her again?” Lena asks grimly, a scowl darkening her face. “Since when?” _

_ Sam’s hands clench at her sides as she takes a deep breath, and she meets Lena’s eye like she’d rather be looking anywhere else. _

_ “It’s been a couple weeks.” _

_ “And you didn’t think to tell me?” _

_ “No, because I don’t know where it’s going, and I knew you’d freak out exactly like you are right now.” _

_ “Oh, this is not me freaking out,” Lena laughs with a wicked, dark grin. “You should be fucking grateful I’m this calm.” _

_ “Look I didn’t tell you because it’s still fresh. We’re just talking, there’s nothing else to it.” _

_ “About what? What the hell do you two have to talk about?” _

_ “Believe it or not, the world doesn’t revolve around you,” Sam mutters tiredly, and she turns her back on Lena and drags herself across the living room. Unlike Lena, where an argument leaves her volatile and so restless that she has to pace right through the floor, it just wears Sam out, and the other woman sinks despondently onto the edge of the couch. Her tone has no bite to it, no resentment, just a fatigue that stretches far beyond this room. “We both have lives that don’t involve you or her sister, okay? We have other things in common.” _

_ “Right.” Lena, on the other hand, turns for the kitchen and rummages through the fridge for a drink, and she calls back into the living like they’re a married couple having their nightly ritual spat. “You expect me to believe that she hasn’t tried to talk to you about me? That you two are just catching up on your fucking hobbies? I know that woman, Sam, she’s relentless and she’s used to getting what she wants.” _

_ When Lena returns with a half-empty bottle of riesling, Sam is sitting forward with her hands rubbing her temples. _

_ “Okay, yeah, we talked about you. But it’s only because you’re one of the most important people in my life, and Kara is for her, so of course we’re going to talk about it.” _

_ “How can you even _ trust _ her?” Lena exclaims. “She knew, Sam! She knew her sister was only talking to me for a story and she just let us waltz into their lives, treated us as if they both actually cared, knowing full well that it was all a lie.” _

_ Sam closes her eyes, ignoring Lena’s heated gaze, as if this is all just an inconvenience for her to have to explain. “She didn’t know the whole time.” _

_ “Oh and is that supposed to make it better? What exactly is the processing period on owning up to being a two-faced lying bitch? Has it bumped up to two weeks now?” _

_ “You make it sound like I wanted to talk to her, I _ didn’t. _ I wouldn’t even talk to her at first, but we work together and I couldn’t just ignore a coworker forever. All she wanted was to come clean and so she told me everything, okay?” _

_ Lena’s resolve crumbles, this cracked and unstable foundation that she keeps together with the cheap clay of denial and the fine, finishing touches of evasion. It happens every few weeks, a fractured mess that spills onto the floor too fast for Lena to pick it all back up, no she can’t immediately, and it always takes a retreat to the darkness of her apartment alone to put it back together. But every time, each time that she breaks, it always takes less time than the last to mend. _

_ “You don’t know the full story,” Sam continues grimly. “Kara actually has a pretty—” _

_ “I don’t _ want _ to know the full story,” Lena snaps darkly. “It doesn’t matter, and you shouldn’t care either.” _

_ With an aggravated groan, Sam rushes off the couch, putting a distance between them. “Of course I care about what happened, because I care about you! You don’t want to face what happened, you want to drink it away and pretend it’s all okay, fine. But she came to me, and I wasn’t even going to think about not slamming the door in her face until she explained her side of things.” _

_ “So you’re on their side, then?” Lena’s mouth curls into a bitter grimace, and she pulls a swig from the flat wine. _

_ “No, dammit, I’m not picking a side, that’s the point. All I mean is that this is more complicated than Kara lying to you and Alex covering for her.” _

_ “But that is exactly what it comes down to.” _

_ “If you’d just let me tell you why she did it, then—” _

_ “Don’t you fucking dare.” Lena wipes her mouth with the sleeve of her sweater, and this time she’s the one to storm away, as if the space between them might bury the sour taste of this disarray. _

_ “What are you so scared of?” Sam doesn’t follow after her, but her voice carrying across the expanse of the room haunts Lena’s ears all the same. “I’m not saying you should forgive her — honestly, I don’t even think that you should — I’m just saying there’s another side to this and I decided to hear it out. Because, I’m sorry, okay? At the end of the day, Kara lied to you and that sucks, I get that you don’t want to hear her out. But Alex is not responsible for her sister’s actions.” _

_ “Oh for fuck’s sake—” _

_ “And at least she was willing to talk to me.” _

_ Lena whirls back around from the archway of the kitchen, her eyebrows skyrocketing. “And what the hell is _ that _ supposed to mean?” _

_ Sam gives her an incredulous look, her shoulders deflating with the more this fight takes out of her while it only just fuels Lena like gasoline. _

_ “Lena, you didn’t even tell me.” Sam’s hands fall to her side weakly. “I found out when the story was already out, and I almost had a heart attack wondering what you were gonna do when you saw it, because not even for a second did I think you’d already know. And then, when I come to make sure you’re okay, your phone’s buried in the freezer and you’re busy cooking a _ casserole? _ Because little did I know, you already knew, and apparently you think nearly burning your apartment down was a better use of your time.” _

_ Lena shakes her head. “I don’t have to tell you anything.” _

_ “Yeah, you don’t. But you didn’t have to lie to me either.” _

_ She turns back sharply. “I did _ not _ lie.” _

_ “But you did, I asked you, over and over again, I knew something was wrong with you and Kara, I’m not an idiot. You’re a terrible liar, you always have been. I just figured if it got bad enough that you’d actually come and talk to me.” _

_ “Oh my god,” Lena groans, her fist tightening around the neck of the bottle. “So I didn’t want to talk about it, is that such a crime?” _

_ “No, it’s not. I just thought we’d moved passed this.” _

_ “Passed what?” _

_ “This, right here.” Sam waves forcefully between them. “The part where you push everyone away because you still don’t trust me.” _

_ “Don’t talk to me about trust, I trusted her with _ everything _ , and where the fuck did that get me?” _

_ “But I’m not her!” Sam yells, the rise of her voice making Lena flinch. “I’m me, Sam, your best friend, the person you’ve known for ten years who’s been standing here waiting for you every time you run away, waiting for it to be the last time that you doubt how much I care about you. I trust you with my freaking kid, and you can’t even give me the time of day when something goes wrong in your life.” _

_ “You want me to trust you?” Lena slams the bottle down on the coffee table and waves to the room. “You were here, with Alex, talking about me and my personal life, and you didn’t tell me. How the fuck is that for being so trustworthy?” _

_ Exhaustion seeping from her pores, Sam drags her hands down her face. “It wasn’t _ like _ that. I didn’t tell her anything about you, I said what’s between you and Kara stays that way, and I’m just here to have your back.” _

_ “If you had my back, you wouldn’t see her.” _

_ Sam’s shoulders fall, the last drain of energy left in her dwindling away. “What?” _

_ “You want me to trust you? Then prove it. Stop seeing her.” _

_ “Is that… are you serious?” _

_ “Yes.” _

_ Sam’s mouth flattens and her eyes blink away the doubt. “Okay. If that's what you need, okay.” _

_ Taken aback by the ease of it, the simplicity, how Sam gives in without anything of a fight, Lena frowns. “Just like that?” _

_ “Yeah, Lena. Just like that.” _

xx

The morning of the ceremony, the first thing Lena does is go for a run. It’s a quarter to six when she laces up her sneakers and tightens her ponytail, when she presses the call button for her private elevator.

It’s not that Lena doesn’t like exercising, she does. She likes the soreness that comes the next day, a reminder of how she pushed herself, like the aftertaste of a long day at work and seeing the stack of paperwork she got through. She likes the way it makes her feel, the confidence and newfound energy. It helps to dispel the pent-up restlessness she’s felt for the last year and a half, an unshakable shadow of agitated fervor that followed her around throughout the end of winter and into the oppressive heat of summer.

Lena’s almost loathe to admit that it was Lillian’s doing, her working out again. It had been the most ridiculous of arguments between the two, and Lena felt like she was thirteen again being lectured on her weight and scolded for her calorie consumption. Lillian, of course, only strong-armed her into an Equinox membership because of the press. The fact that her mother only wanted her in good shape so she would look a certain way for the media had actually just made Lena want to do it less. Why should she conform to a style of unhealthy beauty standards for the very group of people that, two years ago, villainized her for her brother’s mistakes? For an industry that sent a reporter in the disguise of a friend to dig up all her dirty secrets and splay them out for the world to read?

Lena’s never been one to win a lot of arguments with her mother, she’s probably the only person in the world who knows how to get her compliant.

But what started out as a ridiculous venture to look a certain way in tabloid pictures and marketing photoshoots quickly became a release Lena didn’t know she needed. It was an escape of sorts. She could plug in her headphones and slowly drown out the noise of the world, she works her legs up from a leisurely stroll to a quick jog like the accelerating onset of panic. But where before there was palpitations and dread, coming into a run was like letting it all go, leaving it behind in her wake as her feet slap at the rubbery floor of the treadmill racing beneath her. 

She probably would have quit this whole ordeal months ago if it hadn’t felt so good. While she started in the privacy of an expensive gym, Lena quickly grew tired of clanging atmosphere and the nagging encouragement of professional trainers. No, Lena wanted to _ run _, she didn’t want to be moving in place like a cog in a wheel, she wanted to leave something behind her. Lillian thought it was a terrible idea, running outside in public where anyone could see and bother her, but Lena was fast, and if she was going to be forced into upkeeping a body standard for the sharks then she’d do it her way.

She was too quick for anyone to recognize her anyway, running down the sidewalks. If she hit a red crosslight, she just turned down the next block. Sometimes she went in circles, sometimes she ended up two miles from her building. Going so early in the morning of course helped, not many are out at this time of day, except for the early morning workers and the city cleaning crew. 

Unfortunately it’s not early enough, because when she crosses the threshold of the elevator doors back into her suite, her music mutes out and the ringing starts.

Steeling herself with a deep breath, she answers. “Morning, mother.”

_ “What have I said about calling me mother? You sound like a poor, dreadful damsel whose parents sold her for a cheap dowry.” _

“That is… so very specific, I’m not even going to warrant that with a response.” Lena puts her phone on speaker and sets it down on the bathroom’s marble sink edge, tugging her sweaty hair loose from its tie. “What do you want?”

_ “To make sure you’re not planning a hasty exit of the country.” _

“And you say I’m the dramatic one.”

_ “As if you haven’t done it before.” _

Gritting her teeth, Lena presses her lips together into a fine line. “For the last time, I already had tickets for a conference in Lausanne.”

_ “A conference that lasted three weeks?” _

Lena changes the subject. “I’m going, okay? I’ll show up and give the speech you wrote, I’ll play nice, you don’t have to worry.”

_ “Oh, I’m not worried you won’t be there.” _

Mid-unzipping her track jacket, Lena pauses at the suspicious lilt to her tone. “And why’s that?”

_ “Because you’re predictably noble, Lena. I know you’d never stand anyone up in good conscience.” _

Lena shuts her eyes. “Lillian, tell me you didn’t. Please, not tonight, let me just have this one night to myself.”

_ “Gayle Marsh will be downstairs in the limo at six, don’t be late.” _

“The doors open at five.”

_ “Yes, and you’ll be there no later than six-thirty. I’ll get there early to help with the press, and I’ll come find you after. Your dress will be dropped off around noon. Please do try not to spill any of that horribly cheap wine you drink on this one.” _

With clenched fists, Lena hisses, “I told you a hundred times, that wasn’t my—”

The line clicks dead.

“…fault.”

xx

Gayle is nice enough. Not too eager, which is refreshing. If anything, she seems like she wants to be here even less than Lena does.

“This thing come with a bar?” the blonde asks across from her, laying down on the opposite leather bench of the limo with an arm tiredly draped over her eyes.

Lena’s reviewing the script for her speech on her phone, and she looks up at the question with a raised eyebrow. Leaning forward, she pulls the door to the mini fridge open and the rush of crisp, cold air wafts against the bare of her ankles. 

“There’s vodka or champagne.”

“Vodka, always vodka.”

Lena snags two of the little bottles and tosses one to the other woman. Immediately, Gayle sits up, and she eyes the other one in Lena’s hand as she makes an impatient gesture. Rolling her eyes, Lena gives her the other one as well and plucks another out of the fridge.

Gayle downs the first quickly, and clears her throat before she hurries onto the second.

Lena watches her skeptically. “You could do worse than me, you know.”

“Oh please.” Gayle drops the empty bottles onto the carpeted car floor and slumps back against the leather. “I know that, I don’t give a shit about you. But if I’m being forced to go to this thing, over my dead body am I doing it sober.”

The blunt honesty catches Lena off guard, and in place of the offense she’s expecting, Lena finds it rather entertaining instead. She doesn’t really know much about who Gayle is, not really, just that she’s the only child of some major bank CEO, probably as rich an heiress as Lena was. 

“If it makes you feel better, I didn’t want you to be here either.”

Gayle’s mouth perks up into a wry smile. “Really? Your mom said you all but begged for me.”

Scoffing, Lena shakes her head. “Of course she did. 

With intrigue in her eyes, the blonde crosses her arms and regards Lena carefully. “You seem pretty uptight about this thing for someone who’s getting such a payday out of it.”

“Funny, I could tell you the same thing.”

“What, you think I’m an escort or something?” Gayle lets out a sharp, loud laugh. “That’s rich, but I can’t be bought sweetheart.”

“Then, what are you doing here?”

The blonde scowls, and hunches across the space to fish out another liquor bottle. This time, she slumps onto the seat beside Lena, and she kicks off her Louibuitons, tucking her feet beneath her.

“Here’s the deal,” she huffs, breaking the seal of the bottle with a small crack. “Seems like your mom’s a conniving bitch, and my dad’s an impressionable coward.”

Lena raises her eyebrows with a smirk. “And what does that have to do with you?”

“Means my family’s not a fan of the four-finger discount, and it was either this or community service.”

“Shoplifting?” Lena laughs. “Bit ironic of a choice for my date tonight, don’t you think?”

“Baby,” Gayle drawls boredly, throwing back the drink, this time with a slight wince. “Buy me dinner first, then we’ll talk about what this is.”

Lena rolls her eyes. “Just smile at the cameras, I’ll do the talking, and then we’ll head for the bar.”

“Don’t you have to like, mingle? This is a fundraiser, right? Kiss some ass or whatever.”

“Mm, the one perk of tonight is that it’s not my fundraiser.” She motions for Gayle to pass her another drink as well, and the blonde has far too pleased of a smile when she hands it over. “So, I let them come to me. Otherwise I have no plans on speaking with anyone I don’t have to.”

“Wow.” 

Lena glances up. “What?”

“You are… so not what I expected.”

“What were you expecting? Desperately throwing myself at you and overzealous for attention?”

Gayle tilts her head thoughtfully, the amused smile on her mouth trickling to a flatter line, and before she even opens her mouth Lena already wishes she hadn’t asked.

“I just never pegged you as somebody who’d be bitter. Hard-headed maybe, but not bitter. It’s comforting though.”

Gulping the vodka down swiftly, Lena grimaces. “Why’s that?”

“Hm, I dunno. Guess it’s nice to know you’re not as perfect as you seem.”

God, Lena can’t wait for this night to be over.

xx

When the limo pulls up at the base of the orchestra hall, Lena impatiently waits for Gayle to get her heels back on before their driver opens the door for them. The contrast of the glaring camera flashes against the dark, moonless sky is immediately blinding, but Lena forces a smile through it as they both step out. It’s a long trek up the carpeted marble steps, two impenetrable walls of reporters on either side despite how most all the notable guests have already arrived and are inside, and Lena resists the bitter scoff. 

Seriously, it’s one award, for one person, for something she did nearly two years ago.

But both Lillian and Gayle’s words echo in her ear, and Lena swallows the resentment down. She _ is _ being a brat, and she needs to appreciate this more. She’ll probably make the goal she’d projected in January for the entire year tonight alone without having to even scratch anyone’s back. Although to be fair, Lillian gave her strict orders to not talk money with anyone tonight, not make any attempt at coaxing a donation or investor for her cause, something about the tackiness of how the only people who ask for money are the ones who need it, and how people want more than anything to throw their money at powerful figures who couldn’t care less.

It’s these sort of nauseating politics that make Lena wonder what the hell is so different about this than how she lived two years ago.

Since leaving National City, she’s been focused, she’s found her drive, something that finally feels like a purpose. Sure, her dreams piggyback on the failed legacy of her family, she might never have a future completely unladen with the Luthor name, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe her dreams all along were about turning something ugly and corrupt into a force for good.

Maybe it’s naive, maybe it’s wishful thinking, but that’s why she’s doing this, that’s why she left, that’s what she sculpted her dream out of.

Stepping into the frame of countless cameras, the silk of an overpriced gown cinched tight around her waist, a practical stranger smiling on her arm? No, Lena’s not sure when she signed up for this, but apparently to have one is to take a deal for the other.

A fleeting trace of a memory trickles through the noise, an errant line of thought that Lena hasn’t entertained since coming back. It blinks under her poise, wavers Lena’s smile like a particularly strong gust of wind. What was usually just an odd aftermath of an older ideation is more… pronounced, now. It lurks from the back of her mind, creeps from the dusty cracks of a paranoia long since buried.

She wonders if she’s here, somewhere, behind the screen of glimmering lights and microphones, if CatCo picked her to cover this story.

“I heard this was gonna be a big event,” Gayle mutters. “But I didn’t realize half the city cared about your ass.”

Lena’s smile is both angelic and infernal. “You and me both.”

They stop and dawdle for questions, most directed at Lena while Gayle just remains at her side with a loose arm politely draped around her lower back. The only time they ever address Gayle is to comment on her sleek, matte blue dress that plunges low down her chest, or a keen question into the nature of their relationship, but they both wave these remarks off flippantly and Lena leads them further on.

After a last round of posing for pictures, Lena can finally give a mental _ fuck you _ to her mother and finish with this circus-like performance. As she turns to pull Gayle inside, a reporter from the end of the line shouts out her name, calls for a question, and Lena halts on the marble steps.

Gayle stumbles in front of her, her hand caught around Lena’s hip, but Lena is turned towards the reporter and the cameraman beside her quickly narrows in on Lena’s face.

“Ms. Luthor, you’ve been deemed quite the influencer for young girls, a great role model for the younger generation. Any words of encouragement for your new admirers?”

It lurks, after all this time, even still.

“I… I would say that, um…”

She can feel Gayle’s stare, the curious regard, and for just a moment, Lena falters. The reporter’s eyes flicker in confusion to Gayle’s and then back to her before Lena shakes her head, scrounging back her catered starlet smile.

“I would tell them that… this world is full of people who want something from you, who will try and take what it is that they want. People are going to tell you what you should want, and how you should want it.” Lena tilts her head softly. “I’d tell them to remember that, at the end of the day, you can never trust anyone but yourself.”

The arm around her waist tightens for just a moment before Gayle’s leaning into the mic, laughing. “I think that Lena means to say is, never give up, and always have faith in yourself! Thank you so much, have a great night.”

Gayle is the one to usher them inside this time, and she’s mumbling something like _ you’re welcome, you fucking psycho, _ but Lena isn’t listening. After they cross the domed marble lobby, the fifteen-foot tall doors at the end of the gleaming hall part open, and the flood of music and chatter spills out and sucks them in like magma.

The baronial room they enter into is massive, with arched gold ceilings and ionic pillars spread throughout. It’s practically a gala, tuxedoed caterers roaming the floors and high-end gowns everywhere she looks. The music is both tastefully elegant and modern, strong-tempoed scores that make for a smooth, lively background to the lavish atmosphere. It’s a scene straight from her childhood, but where before it was Lex being led through in a newly fitted tux on his lanky frame, the doors closing behind him, it’s now Lena’s standing on the inside. It’s the beautiful flowing dresses that pass around them, the manicured laughter in the wake of a joke no one seems to hear.

It’s expensive, is what it is.

“Okay, I changed my mind.” Gayle’s grip loosens on her hip, and her hand falls to her side. “I am so cool to be your date any time you need.”

Lena plucks a glass of champagne off the first tray that passes her, and Gayle only just manages to snag one of her own before the waiter disappears, and Lena downs her drink quickly. 

“Okay, so that’s how we’re playing it tonight, got it.”

But Lena ignores her still, and she fishes her phone out of her clutch, pulls up her conversation with Sam.

Not a minute later, her phone vibrates in her hands and she eagerly answers it, ducking to the side behind a pillar and hurrying off to the outskirts of the room where she can hear better.

“Hey,” she greets, dropping her empty champagne glass on a table of flowers. “I just got in, and I seriously could use a drink with my best friend right now. Meet me at the bar?”

_ “Okay, so… don’t hate me.” _

Her stomach sinks. “You’re not coming.”

_ “Lena I am so, so sorry, Ruby has food poisoning and has been throwing up for hours, I’m at the hospital now.” _

She straightens up immediately. “What? Where? Which hospital?” 

_ “No, oh no, don’t do that, stop it. You’re not getting out of this ceremony,” _ Sam chastises, the scolding tone she uses for her daughter crisp and clear over the phone. _ “Ruby’s gonna be fine, I just couldn’t keep her hydrated enough, it’s nothing to worry about. You stay there, don’t you dare use me as an excuse to bail now.” _

Lena sighs, cocking her jaw. “Whatever, fine, but I want updates, okay?” 

_ “Yes, I promise I’ll keep you posted.” _ There’s a slight pause, almost too brief to catch. _ “How is it so far?” _

She laughs dryly. “You’re not missing much, don’t worry. My mother set me up with a delinquent thief for a date, and this place is decked out like I’m a fucking celebrity.”

_ “You are a celebrity.” _

“No, I’m the director of a nonprofit and a scientist. The money that went into preparing this alone could probably have covered all the donations I’ll need.” Lena cranes her neck slightly. “I think I see an acrobat hanging from the ceiling.” 

_ “Honestly sounds like a night to remember, send me pictures. Listen, I have to go, but I’ll come over in the morning, okay? I love you, you’ll do great.” _

Lena bids her goodbye with soft wishes for Ruby before they hang up, and she tucks the phone back into her purse. 

Great. Now she gets to parade through this foolish evening with pompous bigwigs and she doesn’t even have anyone she cares about with her. Mind you, there’s a very short list of people to satisfy that demand, but still. Although, she’s sure that Jack is around here somewhere, perhaps Jess and Imra too. Gayle’s right, most the damn city is here tonight, though Lena supposes the elite society will always sniff out a good party.

Sighing, she resolves to go find someone who doesn’t make her ears want to bleed, but first? Definitely the bar.

xx

_ “Okay, I want you to call me every day, and if I go forty-eight hours without hearing from you then I’m calling the authorities.” _

_ Lena, leaning back against the door of the town car, smirks at her friend. “I’ve survived pretty fine so far, I think I’ll be okay.” _

_ “Oh it’s not you I’m worried about, it’s Lillian. I wish I could put my money on you killing her first, but I don’t trust that snake for a second.” _

_ Laughing, Lena pushes off from the car and stands up straighter. “Alright, I’ll keep an eye out. Thank you for helping me settle in to the new place, but you have a plane to catch, so get a move on, because if you miss your flight one more time your babysitter _ will _ quit on you.” _

_ Huffing, Sam tugs Lena into a quick embrace. “Can you blame me? I feel like you just came back in my life and you’re already leaving again.” _

_ Patting her on the back lightly, Lena sighs. “I know, but we’ll stay in touch. We’ll make it work.” _

_ Sam pulls back with a shove at Lena’s shoulder. “Yeah you better. I’m not above dragging you back.” _

_ Lena’s never been very good at goodbyes, she realizes, not really. It sinks in as Sam’s joyous smile drifts to something softer, as her eyes trail over Lena slowly like she’s trying to memorize something. Lena’s about to open her mouth to stop her, to prevent whatever emotional or sappy speech she has planned, because they’re not about to make a bigger deal of this than they need to, when something twinges in her chest. _

_ It’s been bothering her for a couple months now, a nagging regret, the kind that keeps her awake some nights. She’ll clench her eyes at the embarrassment, her abrasiveness, she’ll pretend that willing it away and ignoring it will put it behind her and that, with time, it won’t dig under her skin anymore. _

_ But she’s tired, she’s so fucking tired. _

_ So it’s Lena who opens her mouth with a forlorn gaze. “Hey, um… Before you go, I just.” _

_ Sam’s eyebrows twitch with concern, and she tilts her head to the side. “What is it?” _

_ “I’m… I’m sorry.” _

_ Whatever Sam thought she was going to say, it clearly wasn’t that, because she shakes her head in surprise and laughs. _

_ “For what, babe?” _

_ “For telling you to stop seeing Alex.” _

_ Sam’s smile drops, the briefest flicker of remorse crossing her face, but it disappears just as quickly. “Ah, it’s alright, don’t worry about it.” _

_ Lena swallows and drops her head. “It’s not, that actually wasn’t okay at all. I’m not sure you know how much I love you for doing it, but I…” She takes a deep breath. “It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t kind. I shouldn’t have tried to control you like that, and I’m sorry. So I just wanted to say that, if you wanted to see her, and not that you need it, but… you have my blessing. To go after it, or whatever.” _

_ Sam smiles, and she reaches out to rub Lena’s arm softly. “Thanks, and I appreciate that, but it’s fine. It’s been a while, I’m over it.” _

_ Lena winces apologetically. “Really?” _

_ “Yeah, it doesn’t matter anymore. It was better off as a one-night thing, anyway.” Sam shrugs loosely. “I’ve got Ruby and work, I don’t have time for that rom-com deal anyway. I’m sure I didn’t miss anything.” _

_ Nodding, Lena licks her lips. “Right. Either way, I truly am sorry. For whatever it’s worth now.” _

_ Smiling, Sam opens her arms and pulls Lena in for another hug, this one much more intimate than the last as she burrows into her. Lena squeezes her back, winding her arms tightly around her best friend, and she can’t help the pinpricks of stinging, unshed tears behind her eyes. She’ll never let them fall, of course, but Lena’s heart clenches all the same. _

_ “It’s worth everything.” _

xx

She’s starting to feel the alcohol, it thrums under her skin like the warm wash of a bath, and Lena relishes in it. Making through the crowd in search of the bar is far more difficult than it needs to be, she gets pulled over nearly a dozen times by passing donors and business execs. She even catches a few old friends from her days in Metropolis with Siobhan, other actors she worked with or just the general people who used to hang around that scene of living in front of the all-seeing eye. They greet her like the old friends they are, full of delight and excited well wishes for Lena’s work, enthusiasm for tonight’s ceremony. But Lena can’t help how she struggles to smile passed the pleasantries, bites back the question of asking where they were two years ago when Lex went to jail, when she was disgraced and alone. It’s not just the people she knew once upon a time, it’s every eager grin and firm handshake, every person who gushes how lovely it is to meet her — she wants to know if they remember the pariah they made of her.

But Lillian is infuriatingly right as always, and nothing is uglier than someone with a grudge.

It still does nothing to appease the cynicism rotting her core.

Eventually she makes it to the bar, and she scratches at the stiff, tightly crafted updo of her braided hair, only just barely refrains from ripping the hundred bobby-pins out. A corner at the end, just near the bathrooms, reveals a few empty seats, and Lena eagerly snags the furthest one down. The bartender is far down the other end handling another rush of guests, but Lena finds she doesn’t mind all that much waiting, and she savors the brief moment of solitude as she sinks down into the brass-rimmed barstool.

She glances around, takes in the crowded floor from her private vantage point, the mass of elegantly dressed guests. There are a few reporters with dignitary tags around their neck, and she catches sight of a couple CatCo insignias, Lena’s jaw clenching inadvertently upon sight. It’s like a Russian roulette, how her eyes drift across each unassuming figure, how she antsily seeks out every face she can and eliminates them like confirming a chamber without a bullet. 

She doesn’t want to find her, she doesn’t want to care, she doesn’t even want to be thinking about this anymore, not after all this time, but it’s addictive and she can’t seem to stop.

Her reprieve doesn’t last long, because all too quickly a flash of blonde approaches in her blurry peripheral, and she closes her eyes. “I thought I made it clear that you’re not getting paid to babysit me.”

There’s the creak of someone taking the stool beside her, and Lena sighs.

“And I told you, I’m not getting paid at all. But if you’re offering to buy my drinks, I so wouldn’t turn that down.”

Lena opens her eyes, and Gayle’s giving her a cheeky smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

“It’s an open bar.”

“Really?” Gayle’s entire face lights up, and she twirls around in her seat, craning her neck to catch the bartender’s attention, but she’s still caught up at the other end. “Fuck, there’s at least two-hundred people here and one bartender? That’s just incompetent.”

Leaning onto the black granite of the counter, Lena rubs her temple tiredly. “Again, it’s an open bar. Some patience would do you good.”

Gayle faces her again with a laugh. “C’mon princess, I leave you for twenty mintes and you’re even bitchier than before. What’s up? You need me to hold your hand?”

Irritably, Lena’s hand falls to the bartop with a slap. “Okay, seriously? What is your problem?”

_ “My _ problem?”

“Yes, you. Most people would kill for an invite to an event like this, and you’re acting like a punk teenager that’s been sent to boot camp.”

The stronger Lena comes out with her harsh candor, the more fun Gayle seems to be having, and inexplicably it thrums an appeasing cord in Lena. For just a moment she considers that maybe she isn’t as annoying as she seems.

“Okay, fine.” Pursing her lips, Gayle drapes her arm across the backrest of the barstool, and she looks around them pointedly. 

Lena is just starting to think of retracting her assessment, for that bitter acid reflux of annoyance flares quickly in her throat these days, when Gayle speaks again. She leans in close, face only inches away, and before Lena can pull back, Gayle’s hand is winding up between them and she points towards the floor.

“You see her?” Gayle asks, sour despite the lazy smirk on her face. “That’s my ex.” 

Blinking, Lena turns to follow her lead, fishing out the people in the crowd to find who she’s singling out. “Yeah, you’ll have to be more specific.”

Huffing, Gayle hops off her seat and meanders around Lena until she’s standing immediately behind her, the barest brush of her front against Lena’s back. She stiffens at the proximity, but something in her leaves her reluctant to show her discomfort. A hand softly, politely, presses against the side of her jaw, turning her head for her, and Gayle’s other hand reaches on her other side to point out again, this time much more in line with Lena’s gaze.

Lena narrows her eyes, and she blinks rapidly when she takes in the figure straight ahead of them, the woman standing tall and poised in a beautiful, graceful white gown.

“_Her _?” Lena asks incredulously.

Gayle hums in her ear. “Ah, you know her.”

Lena’s jaw drops, and she immediately spins around in her seat, completely unperturbed by the closeness of their faces. 

“Oh my god,” she hisses. “No she isn’t.”

Chuckling, Gayle nods, and Lena can practically taste the waft of vodka still on her breath. “I mean, from back in college, but yeah. Imra and I dated for like, four years? Give or take.”

For the first time that night, a genuine smile lights up Lena’s face, and the hard laugh that bubbles out from her throat is as genuine as it’s ever been.

Gayle rolls her eyes despite the small purse of her lips. “Yeah, sure, laugh it up, it’s hilarious.”

“I’m sorry, but it kind of really is.” Lena laughs again, watching as a blush creeps up the blonde’s neck. “So you knew she would be here and you came anyway?”

“Please, I wouldn’t be caught dead doing community service.”

“Again, why Lillian chose you is completely beyond me.”

Gayle’s eye drops down to Lena’s, and once more she realizes how close they are, how Gayle is practically standing between her legs, arm loosely draped across the backrest of Lena’s stool, and leaning so close that she can feel the soft swells of her warm breath against her forehead, and — for just this moment, just tonight, just right now — Lena finds that she doesn’t mind the intimacy of it all that much.

“Because I’m hotter than your last date, and I know how to keep you from saying stupid shit on camera.”

Lena laughs again, and the naturalness of it thrums through her much like the warmth of the alcohol, refreshing and _ fun. _ “Okay you’re overreacting, I was not that bad.”

“You encouraged children across America to be paranoid skeptics, you could have said literally anything else.”

Lena opens her mouth to respond, feeling a petulant need to defend herself but Gayle perks up at something just behind Lena. The hand that’s wrapped around her shoulders taps the bare skin of her back, and Gayle juts her chin out pointedly.

“Alright baby, first round’s on me.”

Lena scoffs at the pet name. “For the last time, it’s an open bar,” she laughs, and Gayle rolls her eyes but the stiff line of her mouth twitches like she’s stifling just as vibrant a smile as Lena wears.

It occurs to her that, for the first time tonight, she’s not feeling quite so dreadful about this evening. Of course, everything it stands for still digs under her skin like sharp cutlery across fine china, it's all almost enough to spark a migraine, but maybe she can concede to just _ one _ celebratory drink. She still has her reservations, she still isn’t sure that she should be the one going up on that stage, she still doesn’t know what she’s doing trying to appease a crowd like this. 

But maybe for just one drink, she doesn’t have to make it a pit to drown her sorrows, and she can actually learn to enjoy it. 

She turns around. “I’ll take a scotch, neat please.”

And behind the bar, wearing a skinny black tie and a fitted vest, with pale pink lips parted in surprise, is Kara.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah i don't know how to take a proper vacation, i have way too much free time on my hands
> 
> yes i know this is not how the lasker foundation works and yes i've elected to pretend otherwise


	16. i remember the face, but i can't recall the name

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just... don't question it, i know

Kara stares back at her, unmoving, her affect flat and bare of anything but a crisp, polished apprehension, the kind of rehearsed surprise for something that was always inevitable.

Lena knows the feeling.

There’s the shuffle of movement beside beside her as Gayle leans forward, and all of a sudden the touch of her arm around isn’t comforting or pleasant anymore. It’s not unwanted, it’s not that she doesn’t like it, it’s that it makes the three drinks she’s had so far — four? — simmer in her gut and threaten to come scraping out of her mouth. It’s just suddenly scathing, her touch, it makes air difficult to come by and Lena’s forgotten how to ask her to move away.

Gayle snaps her fingers in front of her, and with a jolt Lena blinks away her dismay, scrabbles back for her grounded presence.

“Hey, the lady asked for a scotch.” Gayle raises her eyes at Kara, impatient.

Lena instinctually drops her hand onto the blonde’s forearm, dropping her voice sharply. “Stop, it’s fine.”

Kara’s gaze shifts back between the two of them, slow, and an unexpected twinge of shame cracks in Lena as the bartender’s eyes drop to where Lena’s hand touches Gayle’s skin. Lena swipes it away, both her hands leaping into her own lap, and she hates how calmly Kara follows the movement.

As nauseating as Gayle’s touch is, the realization that this is something like guilt dousing her head under is even more so, and Lena can only watch the way Kara’s mouth pinches small as she looks back and forth between them. It’s a slap of a recall, that one look, that tiny press of Kara’s lips, the look she always gave when she was holding something in. How easily the familiarity comes back is violent like harsh ocean waves crashing down on her, and it’s like she has a death wish because Lena finds she quickly drinks in every other micro-expression she can find in her, if only just to see what else she remembers.

She traces the tense coil of her jaw, catalogues the blotch of cheap mascara clumping her eyelashes.

“Sorry, no scotch.” Kara licks her lips. “I’ve got uh, regular whiskey? Bourbon, rye.”

Lena waits for her to say something else, something more, to acknowledge what is happening here. Even if Lena would hate it, even if she might lose it if Kara tried to pretend like they were all friends, she still waits for it like the final rain of the summer. 

Her eyes feel much too round and dryer than they should, and Gayle shifts beside her boredly. 

Lena clears her throat.“Anything Irish?” 

Kara tilts her head, and Lena recognizes instantly the annoying crinkle between her eyes, the one that says she’s seeing right through her. It’s like she’s shining a flashlight all the way down to the damp depths of Lena’s gravity, a forgotten tomb of woes.

Kara bites her lip, and Lena refrains the pull of her gaze.

“No. Sorry.”

She means to ask what she’s apologizing for, but Gayle scoffs and they both immediately turn to her.

Gayle flips her hair over her shoulder. “You’d think that if somebody’s gonna throw you a party, they’d actually get your drink of choice.”

Where the blunt attitude before had been amusing, it grates now on Lena’s ears like an errant fly, one she wants to swat away if only for a moment alone. But just as much as she wishes she would leave them alone, that she could escape the blonde’s prying eyes to talk to Kara about something other than whatever alcohol she can get her hands on, she’s just as washed over with gratitude for her presence. Gayle’s a buffer, one that Lena wishes she didn’t need but knows she shouldn’t do without.

Kara looks to Gayle expectantly. “There’s a liquor store down the street. Go knock yourself out if it’s that important to you.”

Gayle’s eyebrows raise, her surprise dangerous and cold, but before she can incinerate Kara on the spot with just the burn of her glare, Lena surprises all three of them with the loud burst of laughter from her own mouth.

Gayle looks at Lena as if she’s lost her damn mind — which, honestly?

She sold that thing away years ago.

She’s still laughing, and to be entirely frank she’s not even sure what about this is so funny, because everything about this dynamic should be sending her to the same pedestal of apathetic malice as Gayle, especially where Kara’s concerned, but just — the _ absurdity _ of this trio, the impossible jeopardy of finding herself in this insane interaction, after all this time, of all the places in the world, with all the possible people Lillian could have set her up with and of all the people she could have hired — it _ is _ fucking hilarious.

The corner of Kara’s mouth curls into the barest of a smile, pale amusement in her eyes like it’s a secret between them. But the surprise is still evident, her taken-aback timidity, and Lena once more is floored by how well she reads her.

“You know what?” Lena inclines her head towards Gayle with a droll, sarcastic smile. “That’s not such a bad idea.”

She misses the joke, and if Gayle thought Lena had lost her mind before, she thinks she’s clinically insane now. “Seriously? You want to go to the store, right now?”

Another laugh under her breath, Lena turns back to Kara to find her both just as confused as Gayle and as amused as Lena, and they share another weighted moment of understanding. It doesn’t leave Lena as breathless as she expects, her heart isn’t stricken or drowned, and something about it feels far simpler than anything else Lena has to face tonight.

“I’ll just have the rye, then, thank you.” 

Kara nods curtly and looks to Gayle. “And for you?”

Gayle just glances between them incredulously, seeming to realize that she’s being left out of some inside joke but not knowing how it could have come so far.

“She’ll have a martini,” Lena says. “Vodka, extra dry.”

Kara nods again, and turns back to her well of drinks without preamble or any other hesitation and leaves them alone.

Lena watches her go, and Gayle’s irritation comes off in waves beside her.

“Okay, actually, who the fuck hired her?”

Lena smirks, tearing her eyes away from Kara’s fluid motions as she tosses together Gayle’s drink. “And what’s the matter now?”

“Are you joking? She had such an attitude.”

“Oh stop, just leave it alone.”

“What? Maybe I’ll take the bitchiness from you, but you can actually afford it. Coming from someone like her? That’s totally unacceptable, I’m not gonna put up with it.”

“Gayle.” She drops her hand onto the crook of the blonde’s elbow, the humor slowly dissipating. “Drop it, I mean it.”

“Okay, and what’s _ your _ issue now? You think that was funny or something? Maybe you’re used to letting the help talk to you like that, but I’m—”

“I know her,” Lena snaps. “Alright?” 

Gayle stops, her mouth twisting into a skeptical frown. “Seriously?”

“Yes. And she was just joking, so calm down.”

“What, like… she’s worked an event for you before?”

Lena sighs, cocking her jaw. “No, just... like how you and Imra know each other,” Lena says flatly as Kara returns in front of them, sliding their drinks across the bar with a carefully composed expression, and Lena returns the stare straight on. “She’s my ex.”

Kara’s mouth snaps shut at the conversation she’s walked in on, her throat bobbing with a swallow, and she holds Lena’s eye this time.

“Gayle, meet Kara.”

Neither of the blondes look even remotely close to exchanging handshakes or pleasantries.

Kara doesn’t linger, she’s quickly called away down the bar, and she hastily takes the exit with only a last, quick glance to Lena.

“I’m sorry, but you dated a bartender?”

Lena sucks in her bottom lip and gives a spiritless laugh. “Does your resumé advertise you as this much of a snob? Or is that a perk reserved just for me to deal with?”

With the rearing head of Lena’s hostility, Gayle’s mouth quickly stretches into a grin. “Ooh, touchy subject, is it? Don’t tell me someone actually managed to break your heart.”

Maybe it’s how harmless she knows Gayle to really be, or maybe Lena just doesn’t know what to fucking care about anymore, but her own anger falls away just as fast and she leans back in her seat.

“Yeah. Maybe she did.”

Somehow, this is the easiest admission she’s given all night.

Gayle sits back on the stool next to her. “Okay, details princess, when was all of this? I feel like this is something I would’ve heard about.”

She hesitates, takes a moment, like she doesn’t know the exact number of days. “About two years ago.”

“I thought you were dating that vampire chick then.”

Lena laughs. “So much for not giving a shit about me.”

“Okay your face was everywhere, it was kind of hard to ignore.”

With a droll smile, Lena reaches out for her drink, the weight of the cool glass comforting in her hand. “No, this was after Siobhan, when I first moved here.”

“Yeah, I heard you went a little off the deep end after all that shit with your brother. But this seems a little much, even for you.”

“You really are very pretentious, has anyone told you that?”

“And you’re more pathetic than I realized, anyone ever tell you that?”

It’s not said with animosity, Gayle’s smirking like this is their thing now, and for reasons Lena can’t fathom, it makes her smile, it makes her feel an abstract sense of safety she hasn’t had in so long.

“No, I think most people are too scared to tell me, actually.”

“Really, scared of you? What are you gonna do, mope them to death?”

Shaking her head with a grin, Lena takes the first sip of her drink, and she savors the peppery bite of it. Maybe she was right, maybe she’s not in such a rush to drown herself in the liquid escape tonight, she might actually take the time to enjoy it.

“Well, since you’re so well versed in my life,” Lena drawls, crossing her legs. “You remember that story from the beginning of last year, the one about me?”

“Oh, the one that talked like you’ve got the sun shining out of your ass? Yeah, actually. Didn’t read it, but my dad wouldn’t shut up about it. Why?”

“Do you remember who wrote it?”

“Okay, seriously, I’m not obsessed with you.”

Lena runs her index finger along the lip of the glass, a slow smile crossing her mouth. “Her name was Kara Danvers.”

Gayle stares at her expectantly, waiting for her to continue, but Lena gives her a second. Then the blonde starts to blink, her eyebrows knitting together. “Wait, Kara Danvers, like… _ that _ Kara?” She jabs a thumb over her shoulder to the blonde behind the bar.

Again, despite the absolute absurdity of the situation, despite how a year ago Lena would already be jumping behind the bar and funneling liquor down her throat, despite how just a few _ months _ ago Lena would be collapsing, she can’t help but smile.

“One and the same.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

Laughing, Lena shakes her head. “Mm, I wish I was.”

“First of all, that is so cheap, having your girlfriend write good press for you. Secondly, why in the hell did you date a journalist, and third, what is she doing bartending here now?”

It comes easy out of her, and Lena shrugs languidly, tilting the dark drink around. “I didn’t actually know she worked for CatCo, supposedly she was hired to write the piece before we even met, and as far as I knew she was just a bartender then. Have you heard of a place called Roulette?”

“That weird speakeasy? I thought that was a front for an illegal boxing ring.”

Lena snorts. “God, I wish that were true. No, Kara used to work there.”

“You’ve seriously lost me.”

“Forget the details. The point is, I didn’t know she was writing a feature on me, it ended when I found out, and I haven’t seen her since.”

“So like, what is she doing here now?”

Sipping at the whiskey, Lena shrugs. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

Gayle has a comically serious frown, so when Lena laughs again, Gayle huffs, and it’s actually rather cute. 

“Okay, pretending for a second that I actually believe this is true… why are you telling me? This doesn’t exactly sound like public knowledge.”

“Because it’s not. You’re about one of… I think, six people who know.”

Gayle waves her on impatiently. “Yeah, again, why are you telling me? I could seriously go up to just about anyone in this room and it’d be leaked in a second, and I’ve got a feeling you don’t want Forbes to catch wind of this.”

Smirking, Lena looks back again behind the bar, and this time she catches Kara watching her. She expects her to look away, to blush or something at being caught staring, but Kara simply meets her gaze, even and still. This time, Lena finds she can’t quite read her, doesn’t recognize the flat line of her mouth or the looseness of her jaw, the strange paleness of her eyes. 

“You know how long I’ve thought about this moment?” Lena asks in lieu of answering, holding Kara’s eye despite knowing she couldn’t possibly hear her. “I fantasized about it, dreaded it, sometimes even hoped for it. I used to think it would change everything, some way or another. I thought it would be my chance to finally prove something.” 

“Is it?”

Kara finally looks away as she sets a glass of champagne in front of someone else down the bar, some man in a suit that Lena can’t really see, but she can tell that he’s talking, chatting animatedly with a number of gestures, and Kara gets taken by his excessive talking. She nods placidly, her smile dead and such a poor mask of her disinterest that it makes Lena frown. 

Lena turns back to Gayle quickly. “You know that feeling you get when you’re reading a book, or watching a movie, and it has this incredible plot and buildup, the characterizations are excellent, the suspense is perfect, and then it just ends with the simplest resolution possible? It ties it all up with a solution that is so plain and obvious, you realize you should have seen it coming all along?”

“Uh, like you’re disappointed?”

Lena eyes the last half of her drink, the dark transparence, the sizable gulp that’s left. She sets it back down.

“Like you could have saved yourself a fair amount of time and money if you’d just skipped to the last twenty pages, and you wouldn’t have missed a thing.”

“I literally have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Lena steps off the stool, bending over to pull down the hem of her dress and straighten out the wrinkles. Bending back up, she gives Gayle a dry smile. “I’m telling you because I know you couldn’t care less. Would you like to dance?”

Gayle eyes her wearily. “Yeah… sure. But uh, are you good? If you need to take a second or something, go to the bathroom or whatever, you can. I’ve had the last thirty-six hours to prep for Imra, and I know this Kara chick must have caught you off guard, so—” 

“Darling, I like you far more when you’re being yourself than pretending to be somebody you’re not. So you can either dance with me now, or I can find someone else and you can stay here at the bar by yourself longing after a girl who doesn’t want you. It’s your choice.”

Gawking like she can’t decide if Lena’s crossed a line or not, Gayle stares at her for a few seconds more but tossing back the last of her martini, and she scrambles to her feet after Lena, who is already retreating into the thick of the crowd.

xx

_ She starts in her living room. _

_ “Hope, what day is it?” _

_ “It is New Year’s Eve, Ms. Luthor.” _

_ “And what are my plans for tonight?” _

_ “You have no events scheduled for this evening.” _

_ “That’s right.” Lena dips her pinky into the tepid surface of her drink, swirling it around. She retracts her finger and points it upward, watching the golden drop of scotch trail leisurely passed the slope of her knuckle until it curls around the base, slipping down into her palm before it inevitably loses itself and flattens into just a small, wet smear. _

_ “I have absolutely nothing planned for tonight,” she murmurs. _

_ She tries playing the television for a while, watches the broadcast of all the couples, friends, and families gathered in the park square to watch the ball drop. They smile like they’re posing for a photograph to be hung in a dentist’s office, they scramble over each other in the background behind the newscasters, just fighting to be in even just one frame of the shot, as if anyone is going to remember the bouncing teenager with a blurry grin who made a two-second long appearance. _

_ Lena finishes her drink. _

_ Her socked feet are kicked up onto her glass coffee table, the one she never uses for anything but the sad centerpiece of drooping white lilies in the middle. They should have been replaced days ago at least, if not a week, the green leaves wrinkled and yellowing like tarnished brass, the petals shriveled and sour. She doesn’t even remember where they came from, if Sam put them there or if the housekeeper that Lillan hired did. No, yes, it must be the cleaner, Carrie is her name. Lena gave her the holiday weeks off, since at days before Christmas, which would explain why they’re still here. She’s not even sure if Carrie celebrates the holiday, but she was all too happy for the time off, and the slow settling of dust throughout the penthouse is a fragrant imitation of how Lena feels now, slumped back into the French, black satin of her sectional. She feels like the unused surfaces that make up this apartment, the cold marble countertops and pristine lacquered shelves. She feels like the cool expanse of the windows looking out over the vibrant city, stillborn and resilient while the rest of the world moves. _

_ She stares at the lilies. _

_ Lena clicks off the television and climbs to her feet, groaning at the crack of her joints as her back settles into a straighter posture and her legs unbend. She drops the empty rocks glass onto the counter, the clatter echoing throughout the immensity of open space, and she rubs her eyes blearily, the sting of staring at a screen for too long leaving them dry and sticky. _

_ “Hope, what time is it?” _

_ “It is eleven twenty-six.” _

_ Lena scoops her jacket off the hook. _

_ The first place she finds herself is a bar down the street. It’s an upscale spot, the menu cocktails are twice the amount they should be and half the quality of anywhere else, but its name is notorious and acclaimed, and it’s packed. She squeezes her way inside, pressing through the squirm of bodies dancing and laughing, the mass of thrumming music and cacophonous chatter almost deafening. She slips out through the pack at last, finds the barest patch of breathing room by the end of the bar where the cocktail waitresses pick up their drinks, a line of garnishes along the edge of a black mat, containers of orange slices, maraschino cherries and green olives. The two barkeeps are held up in the middle, working around each other in a dance-like rhythm that Lena watches for a few minutes, mindless. _

_ She turns away to watch the bar floor, the pairs of dancing couples and groups of friends, laughing and screaming to be heard over the noise in a picturesque capture of stock cards. There are people sitting along the length of the bar, leaning in close to one another’s ears, lips moving wordlessly under the drunken haze of celebrations, smiling like any secret that comes alive tonight gets to stay in the year they leave behind. _

_ When a bartender finally makes it down to her with an expectant look, she can only stare back. Her mouth parts open, ready to relay her simple scotch neat, her easy usual order, one that leaves no room for anything else, the only drink she’s ever been ordering for a year now, but it dies in her throat. _

_ “I’ll give you another minute,” he shouts, rushing away impatiently to help someone else. _

_ Lena leaves. _

_ She left her phone back in the penthouse, and so she’s not sure what time it is as she meanders down a sidewalk running along a bike path at the edge of the beach. In the middle of the night in the dead of winter, especially so close to the ocean, the wind is biting and grim, it pushes back the lapels of her coat and slices under her collar, whipping her hair around like needles cracking into her dry skin. _

_ Despite the cold, there are still plenty out on the beach, running campfires with packs of beer dug into the sand, stereos blasting top-charts music. People race down the street, whisking passed her on the sidewalk with the unabashed youth of summertime freedom. _

_ They’re all with someone, they all have somebody at their side. _

_ The only indication she has as to when the clock ticks oer is the eruption of fireworks, booming all around her like the base of club speakers far too close to her ears. Shouts and yells can be heard all around, coming from the beach, leaking out of the bars, raining down from the rooftops, everyone welcomes the new year like an old friend they trust not to let them down. _

_ It’s not for another hour until she makes it back inside, the numbness to her extremities almost painful with the wash of electric heat rushing down on her, and her teeth clatter as she pries open the buttons of her jacket with trembling fingers. She makes through her thorough, nightly routine, she showers until the boiling hot water blasts away every last speck of the outside world from her body, she scrubs her face clean of isolation, she brushes and flosses for so long that Lillian will be proud of how she never has to hassle Lena into teeth-whitening strips. She sleeps in long, silk pants and a matching top, slipping under the cool covers of her bed, and she tells Hope to turn off the lights. _

_ She doesn’t dream, and she absolutely does not wonder. _

xx

She spends the night chatting with local business kingpins, ones Lillian prospected months ago to become investors of L-Corp before she even left Metropolis and have already written sizable checks for tonight’s fundraiser alone. They all fish for the same thing, they search her face for a sweet, feminine gratitude, they drop pet names like they’re entitled to it and they touch the bare skin of her elbow or the small of her back like her body was part of the sale. She brushes them off each time, not with a timid side-step but by pairing a dangerous rise of an eyebrow with a perfectly tailored jest asking where their wives are tonight, an appropriately polished reminder of her last name.

Lena doesn’t usually use her last name to get where she needs, she hates to rely on it for much of anything. But the crack of a greedy smirk when she drops a small quip about _ just _ how much havoc her brother wreaked, about _ just _ how resourceful her mother is, about _ just _ how close she is with the city mayor — it’s too pleasing to watch, too delicious an opportunity to pass up.

It should be annoying, Gayle’s flagrant disregard for these conversations every time Lena gets swept up by someone, but it’s almost the most entertaining thing about tonight, more so than any other type of festivity the Lasker foundation has put on for tonight. Gayle will look around them boredly while Lena talks about her organization for two minutes, while a balding man in cloudy gray suit talks for eight about how he considered starting a nonprofit of his own once upon a time, but found he didn’t find it quite so satisfying as running a _ true _ business.

“Read: he couldn’t make enough money off of it,” Gayle mutters in her ear, but carelessly not quiet enough so that the other man does still hear it, if the pink flush in the tips of his ears is any indication, but he continues on as if he hadn’t.

Gayle is almost the most entertaining part.

The part that Lena is most eager to pick apart is wearing white button up and pouring drinks without a tip jar.

Lena’s leaning against a white pillar a short, safe distance from the bar when Gayle returns from the bathroom, and she finds the executive director with pursed lips and crossed arms. 

“Hey, where’s your mom, by the way? I thought she was gonna be here.”

“Don’t know, don’t care. Will you get me another drink?” 

Following Lena’s line of sight, she huffs. “You go get it. You clearly want to talk to her.”

“Mm, not really, no.”

Gayle rolls her eyes and takes off for the bar.

She wasn’t lying before, there is something unexpectedly anticlimactic about seeing Kara again. It’s nothing to do with how much time has passed. It’s not the indifference she’d been hoping for, but it’s also not the resentment and horror she might have dreaded. It’s not a lack of anything at all, like the frozen denial of someone burying everything so far down it can never be seen again. It’s not heartbreak.

It’s just… curious. Careful intrigue. Fascination is too strong a word but there’s an interest that’s beyond simply understanding how this is a woman she was once in love with. It makes something click into place, something she didn’t want to acknowledge because of how broken and busted it would leave her, but she’s surprised to realize she only finds peace.

Not rest, not the ease of a story finally coming to a close, but the prospect of an end in sight.

Gayle trails along after her as the night goes on, and it’s all just more of the same until they wind down for the main event, the reason they’re all here.

Someone from the foundation announces her award onstage, there’s applause, hors d'oeuvres are served quietly throughout the room to keep people sated while a brief precis is given on why Lena Luthor, why not someone more deserving.

She tunes most of it out and looks over her shoulder, but there are too many people between them for her to make out anyone behind the bar. 

And then Gayle is elbowing her side and jerking her head towards the stage, all eyes are on her, and Lena blinks quickly when she realizes it’s time.

As she climbs up the steps on the side of the stage, hiking up her dress as she emerges into the simmering heat of the bright stage lights, she wonders. 

Of course there are cameras, of course her speech will be transcribed and posted in some journal by tomorrow, and of course Lillian is somewhere around here and would immediately find out if Lena doesn’t stick to her script. But for a minute, she wonders, she thinks about all that she could say. Lena blinks through the haze of the blinding lights, struggling to focus on any of the faces before her, and it’s a lost cause trying to pick out Kara from the bar, all the way on the opposite side of the orchestra hall. It’s senseless, impossible, but she looks out in that direction all the same as she approaches the microphone, as the bronze painted pewter of a headless angel is handed to her and everyone else waits.

She wonders.

She wonders about trust, about the truth, about lies, about culpability. She chews over the notion of forgiveness, of what it looks like, of the taste it leaves behind, if the point is that it tastes like nothing and instead takes away the bitter lace of resentment under her tongue. She considers how it is that someone proves they are worthy, how someone measures up to the award of fortitude. 

The speech Lillian wrote her, she memorized the night before, murmured over in the shower this morning, skimmed through in the limo before she arrived. She knows it well, she knows the pauses and intonations Lillian went so far as to note down, she knows where she smiles and where she must look serious, she knows it all the way down to its punctuation.

She wonders if Kara is listening, if that would make a difference.

Looking out at the crowd, Lena gives a sweet, close-lipped smile, and she recites.

xx

After it’s over, people start leaving. Not most, not all, but a good amount. Most people head for the bar, and while that’s also her first instinct on where to go next, both literally and metaphysically in some sense of the word, she refrains. She can only imagine how quickly Kara must be racing back behind the bar, and she supposes now that the somewhat limited inventory of drinks makes sense when serving a crowd this large for free.

She chats with other investors, another endless crowd of high scale employers and barons, and there’s starting to feel like far more than two hundred people because just when she thinks she’s spoken to everyone, another appears, eager for her ear. Forget the fact that most of them spend twice as much talking as she does, their main goal being to share _ their _ thoughts on _ her _ organization rather than any actual questions. She speaks with a couple reporters, entertains their brief interviews, and as soon as she’s in front of the camera, Gayle magically appears by her side. 

“Can’t trust you to handle them alone, can I?” the blonde murmurs in her ear, and Lena makes no effort to stifle her smirk. It’s not that she puts any actual weight to the idea, and she couldn’t care less if Gayle is being sarcastic or not, because Lillian has molded her into the perfect subject for the press by now. She can handle a few surface dialogues, answer questions about her speech, discuss it all, even if she thinks it’s bullshit. It’s just, it’s nice having someone beside her. It’s not that Gayle really knows her, or even understands her that well, but she’s refreshing and makes the knot between Lena’s shoulder blades just that much looser.

“I'ma talk to her.”

Lena’s ducked out of the last interview, hitting the quota her mother had requested from her, and the area around the bar has cleared enough for them to squeeze in. It’s just as Lena is leaning into a seat, half-on half-off a stool, that Gayle drops this confession.

She raises her eyebrows. “Imra?”

“Yeah.”

Lena looks around, catching sight of the oncology specialist in conversation with someone else on the floor. “What happened between you two anyway?”

Gayle shrugs. “Like I said, we met in college. Dated for a couple years after but then it just… I dunno. Died. Nothing happened, to be honest. I knew something was different, but I just thought the honeymoon phase was over, you know? And then one day I was brushing my teeth, and she told me she wasn’t happy anymore.”

“And that was it?”

Gayle hums, working her bottom lip between her teeth. “Yep. She left an hour later.”

Lena looks back to Imra again, glancing between the two of them. She’s been in a sour mood most the night, everything about this setting grinds on her nerves, and when she met Gayle in the car, she was sure that nothing would make this night bearable except for a stiff, deep drink. The last thing she expected was for a petty shoplifter with a highbrow attitude to get her through it.

“How long’s it been?”

“Four years.”

Lena chuckles under her breath, sitting back further into the stool. “You’d be surprised what a little time does for someone.” She tilts her head in Imra’s direction, smiling. “So yes, I think talking to her might be a good idea.”

Gayle tucks her clutch under her arm, and she nods towards the bar. “What about you? You gonna grow some balls?”

Lena raises an eyebrow. “Well you see, unlike you, I never lost them.”

“Oh ouch,” Gayle laughs, grimacing. “So there’s the infamous Luthor bite.”

Lena pushes her off in the opposite direction, smiling. “Please, that’s nothing. So get out of my sight before I actually show you.”

“Okay, okay, fine. Should I just meet you at the party then?”

Lena furrows her brow. “The party?”

“The afterparty? Your mom said I was going to both.”

Lillian, of course. Scoffing, Lena ducks her chin with a quick shake of her head. Pressing down the irritation, she clears her throat. “Yes, that’s fine, I’ll meet you there.”

Gayle quickly disappears with a lazy wave over her shoulder, and Lena is left alone at the bar at last. There’s still a fair number of guests remaining inside, but most mingle out still on the floor. Lena can’t fathom what the hell they still have to talk about, they’ve all been here for at least three hours now, surely it’s all out of their system. But with drinks in hand and checkbooks in their pockets, she supposes they can go all night.

“Hey.”

Lena turns her head from the dwindling crowd to the voice, a voice she once knew, a voice that once was lively and candid. Her gaze falling onto Kara, she can’t help but notice there’s something far different about her than just the stale timidity of her tone, and she wonders if it’s something worth figuring out.

Lena smiles politely, painted like crystal glassware. “Hi.”

“Another whiskey?”

“Sure. Let’s try the bourbon this time.”

When Kara returns with her drink, the blonde looks over her own shoulder, up and down the line of the bar, almost as if she’s looking for an excuse to be pulled away, and strangely Lena finds it amusing.

“You know, the irony of this doesn’t escape me,” she points out. “The girl at a bar and the girl behind it.”

Kara looks back to her, her lips pursing into a frown like she’s calculating something. She looks once more behind her, and she must not find what she’s looking for, because she slowly toes up closer to the corner where Lena sits.

“I’m sorry,” Kara starts, and Lena raises her eyebrows, wondering if they’re jumping right back to where it left off. But Kara continues, “I tried to get this shift covered because I knew you wouldn’t want me here, and— I just, I’ve already called out too many times and I really couldn’t blow it off, so—”

“Okay, breathe.” Lena laughs gently, plucking up her glass. “It’s fine. You don’t have to explain.”

Kara stares blankly at her, nods. “Okay. Is the drink okay?”

“Mm, yes, tastes just like a bourbon. Did you pour this yourself?”

Kara looks like Lena’s given her a complex algorithm sequence to decode, she seems at a loss to handle a Lena that makes jokes. If she’s being honest, the light humor surprises even herself. Approaching the bar, she knew she was okay, but sitting here talking to the last woman she ever trusted is far more comfortable than it should be.

Lena tilts her head to the side, carefully regarding Kara’s unnervingly still hands, the weighted focus of her gaze that seems to be looking at both nothing and everything.

“What are you doing here, Kara?”

“Um… working?”

Lena eyes the embroidering stitched to the breast of Kara’s shirt. “For National City Catering and Co.? What happened to Roulette?”

She can’t be sure what Kara expected for Lena to say, because it wasn’t the lighthearted ease, nor is it these questions, and Kara seems about as nervous as Lena had imagined herself to be, once upon a time.

“Well, Veronica wasn’t very happy with me after… everything that happened, so that fell through pretty fast.”

“And CatCo?”

“Ah, yeah, I quit there. A bit over a year ago now, I think.”

“Oh.” This stumbles her logic more than anything else. She’s considered dozens of possibilities, that Kara had taken her promise to Lena too seriously and never took the job out of a late sense of nobility, that the bartending here was just part-time, hell she’d think that Kara was fired for trying to sabotage her own story far sooner than she’d anticipate her quitting. “Why’s that?”

“Just, conflicting interests, I guess.”

Lena chuckles. “Right. So you were on board with their interests before that, then?”

“What do you— oh.” Kara blinks, and the fall of her shoulders makes it seem like this was more the type of grilling she’d expected from Lena. She should feel a gripe of satisfaction at how this still irks Kara, how she still cares what Lena thinks, but again that same twinge of guilt she’d felt when Gayle had her arm around her resurfaces, and Lena can’t understand why, because aside from the pinch of Kara’s mouth she shows no other indication of even taking offense.

Lena waits for the correction, for Kara to tell her again that she never wanted to do it, or some excuse about how she changed her mind. She waits for her to remind her of what it said, perhaps to point out the soaring flight Lena’s career has taken since then.

But she doesn’t.

Kara just looks somewhere over her shoulder Lena’s left with something far colder than guilt.

“Oh, there you are.”

Lena snaps away as someone appears at her side, and suddenly Lillian is squeezing between the chairs and pushing one aside with a look of disdain.

“I should have known I would find you at the bar.” She brushes her hair back over her shoulder and addresses Kara. “Get her a water, would you?” When she turns back to Lena, she’s not quite sure what her mother sees but she eyes Lena quizzically and frowns. “Are you alright?”

Lena ignores the question and takes a generous sip of her drink if only to steel herself for the headache to come. “Glad to see you finally decided to make an appearance.” 

“I’ve been here this whole time, Lena, and don’t think I didn’t notice how you forgot to thank Alexander in your speech.”

“I didn’t think it was appropriate.”

Kara sets a tall glass of water in front of her.

“Then don’t think next time,” Lillian says with an acid upturn of her mouth, something meant to look like a smile but it’s about as genuine as Lena’s tolerance of this ceremony. “He was pivotal to your discovery, and openly thanking him demonstrates an altruistic humility that you clearly do not have.”

Lena opens her mouth to answer, but Lillian pointedly looks to Kara, who still lingers behind the bar in front of them, watching with an awkward sort of unease. “What? She’s not doing any autographs tonight, run along.”

To her credit, Kara doesn’t look like Lillian bothers her all that much, just confused, and she remains a beat too long, watching Lena for… _ something. _But she turns back around with the same mask of indifference as before, and Lena runs a hand down her face tiredly.

“Seriously, why do you have to speak to people like that?” Lena groans. “You write my speeches to portray me like I’m a fucking saint, but as soon as you open your mouth it’s as if you’ve completely forgotten even the basic concept of _ manners.” _

Lillian regards her boredly. “Are you finished?”

“When were you going to tell me about the party?”

“Right now. It’s at the Carlton hotel, and you may head over in twenty minutes.”

“Oh, I may?” Lena laughs. “How generous of you to allow me such a privilege.”

Lillian nudges forward her water with the back of her hand, unperturbed by Lena’s hostility. “If I told you beforehand, you would conveniently fall ill halfway through the evening and be gone the second you finished your speech. There’s a photographer there, and it would do you well to be seen celebrating.”

Lena grits her teeth and, ignoring the water, she reaches for the bourbon instead. “Fine.”

“You do understand that Goddard will tell me if you’re dropped off anywhere but at that hotel?”

“I said fine, didn’t I?”

With an amused huff, her mother acquiesces, and she nods curtly, stepping out from between the barstools. “Alright then. I’m catching the next flight back to Metropolis, and we have a conference call with an accountant from Goldman Sachs on Monday, and this is a big opportunity for us that I won’t let you sabotage, so I’ll be in touch the morning of.”

Lena only nods to show her comprehension, and Lillian seems to accept this. She takes only a step away before Lena lifts her head.

“Do me a favor, Lillian?” She looks over shoulder, catching her mother’s frigid eye. “Don’t forget that you work for me.”

“Of course, dear.” Lillian smiles, and then it widens to show her teeth. “You really are so much more like me than you realize.”

Lillian leaves, and Lena downs her drink.

When Kara returns, she carries the bottle of bourbon in hand, and she only holds it up in silent question before Lena waves her on.

“Thanks,” Lena mutters, already wrapping her fingers around the glass before Kara’s even finished pouring.

“Yeah. Looked like you could use it.”

Lena laughs dryly, not looking up from her drink. As fucked up as it is, there’s some truth to her mother’s words. Part of the appeal of working with Lillian was the same, unwavering drive for a single goal: success, prosperity. Without Lillian, maybe she wouldn’t be _ nothing _, but she would still be in National City working for Jack, conducting research, she never would have even considered buying the family company, much less known where to begin in restoring it to what it is today. She’s dabbled in the business side of things before, she grew up learning how to buy stocks before riding a bicycle, but that’s hardly the building blocks compared to what it’s taken to get where they are now. Without Lillian, maybe she would be fine, staying at SI, running experiments and writing lab reports. It reminds her of how one-dimensional she was then, when Lillian found her. 

She was just the shell of someone who thought she was smarter.

“Was that your mom?”

Lena glances up. 

She wonders what Kara is still doing here.

“Yes.”

Kara just hums, this time playing with a black rag in her hands, and her tongue peaks out from between her lips. “Um, so I know it’s none of my business but—”

“You’re right. It’s not.”

There are three things.

She catches the flash of a cringe across Kara’s face, the stunned waver like she should have known better, and for fuck’s _ sake _ why does it make Lena drop her head with shame?

“I’m sorry, it’s just— it’s complicated,” she tries weakly. 

Kara shakes her head, waves off the apology. “Don’t be, I shouldn’t have asked.”

This night, this award, it represents a time of her life that is so far out of reach Lena almost thinks it happened to someone else, that these memories are only false implants. It would certainly explain why Kara can be both so familiar and foreign, why Lena knows almost each and every tic and expression like she knows the registrar to her organization, and it would explain the blurry shadow of a face she’s looking into now.

“When did you leave?” 

Kara tilts her head, her hands stilling. “What?”

“CatCo, when did you quit?”

Kara looks down at Lena’s drink with an odd sort of longing, and she’d almost think that she wants it for herself if Lena didn’t know she doesn’t drink, before she answers.

“April. Last year.”

Around the time Lena left, then. She stares at Kara blankly like it’ll occur to her, the correlation, if there even is one, but nothing immediately comes to mind, and Lena wonders — not for the first time — if she’s looking for meaning in places where there is none.

Lena rubs her face, in all likeliness smudging her eyeliner, and Lillian will throw a tantrum when the photos come out tomorrow. 

She feels — 

Oh god Lena is so fucking _ sick _ of piecing together what it is that she feels, of finding a precise manner of articulating what this throbbing dizziness that just barely escapes out of reach feels like, she’s tired of trying to understand what her heart is trying to tell her every time it hammers in her chest and every time it stills and quiets in a way it hasnt in nearly two years. She doesn’t want to dig for the profound answer underneath all these layers of resentment and guilt and anger and hurt because she’s not sure where to even _ find _ it all anymore, she’s not sure those are names she can answer to, because then she’ll worry that her hypothesis has been right all along, and if it was, then what has been the point of all this _ time? _

Kara catches her eye. “Listen, I just wanted to make sure you know that—”

“I have to go.” Lena throws back again the rest of her drink, and oh she’s long since lost count on how many into the night she is, but part of proving her resilience this last year means growing a thicker tolerance. So Lena is nothing if not the perfect picture of poise and apathy as she stands, brushing her hair behind her ear. 

“Thank you for the drink, and it was nice to see you again.”

To her surprise, Kara laughs. “It’s okay, I know it wasn’t.”

Lena stares at her. 

She was prepared for many things, many outcomes and many fallouts. This Kara, the one who has no patience for talkative men in suits, the one who talks back to Gayle with the sort of snide quip Lena would have made herself, the one who can find the joke in how Lena wishes she were anywhere but here — it’s as refreshing as it is terrifying.

“Goodbye, Kara,” she says slowly, cautiously.

Kara smiles like her face belongs to someone else.

She’s a few steps away, and she thinks she isn’t meant to hear it, she’s not even sure if she actually does, but Lena doesn’t stop or turn back.

_ “Congratulations, Lee.” _

xx

She and Gayle don’t last long at the party.

“How’d it go?” the blonde asks, coming up beside her in the kitchen of a suite twice the size as Lena’s, nudging her elbow.

Lena sips at her champagne, wonders what kind of celebratory party doesn’t carry liquor, and inexplicably she finds that she doesn’t have the stomach for this. She sets the half-full glass down on the counter behind her and sighs.

“She met Lillian.”

Gayle snorts her champagne, coughs. “Okay, y’know under normal circumstances meeting the parents is usually a good sign, but I really think you should save your mom for when you’re trying to get _ rid _ of the girl.”

Lena turns to Gayle, raises her eyebrows. “And how about you? Imra forgive you?”

Gayle huffs. “I didn’t do anything to warrant needing forgiveness.”

“Then…?”

“No, fuck you, she didn’t forgive me. Said I should’ve stayed in the grave I crawled out of.”

“So it went well then?”

“Better than you by the sound of it.”

Lena doesn’t laugh, and Gayle doesn’t smile. The blonde sips at her champagne mindlessly, but after a moment even she grimaces at the sparkling wine and sets it aside. Together they regard the party of A-listers and practical strangers they don’t know, the joints being rolled, the red-carpet laughter.

“I know an exit out the back of the hotel,” Gayle points out eventually.

“I’m right behind you.”

xx

Lena wakes with a migraine that has nothing to do with a hangover.

She rolls over tiredly, the quiet rumble of a groan only just barely escaping her lips as she runs her hands down over her face. 

“Morning, sweetie.”

Lena jolts from the bed, scrambling off the edge and stumbling over the floor. “Holy _ fuck _,” she snaps, only just barely managing to keep her balance as she staggers back into the wall. “What is the matter with you?”

“What?” Sam stands in the entryway of Lena’s bedroom with a breakfast tray in hand. “I made eggs in a basket.”

Hand over her chest and still heaving back her collected composure, she stares back at Sam incredulously. “You made _ what?” _

“Why are you yelling?”

“Oh my god,” Lena groans, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Sam, what the fuck are you doing here? What time is it?”

Sam trots over to the bed and sets the tray down at the end, gesturing for Lena to join her. “It’s seven. I told you I was coming by, and as an apology for missing the ceremony, I made you breakfast.”

Sighing over the lost notion that she’d get anymore sleep, Lena drops herself opposite Sam on the bed, landing on her stomach, and Sam tuts when it jostles the glassware.

“Was it that bad?”

“Worse,” Lena mumbles into the duvet. “I think I actually had a good time.”

Sam runs a soothing hand down over the mess of Lena’s hair. “What’s wrong with that?”

Lena tells her.

Sitting up now, legs crossed and picking at a bowl of halved strawberries, Lena watches her best friend carefully.

“I’m sorry, but you just told _ Gayle Marsh _ everything? Really? Of all people, her?”

“That’s the part you want to focus on?”

“Listen I love you, but when I said you should open up more, this so not— You really have to go for one extreme or the other, don’t you? A year ago, I could barely get you to shelve your paranoia long enough to hire an assistant, and now you’ve just shared all your deepest and darkest secrets with a spoiled trust fund baby?”

Lena frowns. “I’m a trust fund baby.”

“Oh my god, that’s _ different. _”

Lena drops her eye and tugs off a corner of the golden toast, scraping it into the orange yolk on the plate while Sam gathers herself. She hears her soft sigh of deflation, the kind of patient centering only a mother knows how to master. 

“Are you okay?”

Smiling grimly, Lena pops the bite of egg-soaked bread into her mouth. “I really wish everyone would stop asking me that.”

“You don’t have to be okay, if you don’t want to. It’s not gonna kill you.”

“What ever happened to that guy you were seeing?” Lena asks suddenly, her head popping up.

“What? What guy?”

“I don’t know, that guy from like two years ago. Cheated on his ex-wife, dad of one of the kids on Ruby’s soccer team. I just realized, you talked about him so much and then you never mentioned him again.”

Blinking quickly at the abrupt change of conversation, Sam’s eyebrows dig into a frown. “Oh, Nick? Um, it didn’t last. You were right, he was sleeping with like two other moms on the team. Why?”

Lena can’t help the snort of laughter, and Sam slaps her on the elbow, both affronted and amused as a laugh escapes her own mouth. 

“Why is that funny?”

Lena washes her mouth with a gulp of black coffee, trying to smother her laughter. “It’s just — god, you probably won’t but, do you remember when I came back from Metropolis from visiting Lex, and you were yelling at me for avoiding Kara?”

Sam’s eyes float around as if trying to place the memory, and she shakes her head. “Like, vaguely, sure. Why?”

“You told me to stop sabotaging my happiness,” Lena reminds her wryly. “And I was avoiding her because I found out she was the reporter that figured out Lex. I knew, months before the article came out, I knew she’d written for CatCo before, and I almost ended it right then and there. But then you started talking about this guy, about trusting someone on their actions today instead of judging them for their past and I just… it’s funny. It’s fucking funny, isn’t it? We were both idiots.”

Sam stares at her with her mouth hanging open in muted concern. “I would ask if you want me to call someone, but I think I’m your only emergency contact.”

“Mm, you want to call Lillian?”

“Oh my god, does Lillian know too?” Sam exclaims, her voice rising comically high. 

“Christ, no.” Lena flicks the crumbs over the tray. “She knew a little when I hired her, sure, I told her the basics. But she had no idea who Kara was, thought she was waiting for my autograph.”

Sam buries her face in her hands. “Please tell me I’m being punked.”

Lena laughs, wiping her hands on a napkin and climbing to her feet. “Don’t think so, unfortunately. I’m going for a run, you want to come?”

Sputtering still, Sam flounders. “Hold on, just hold on a second — how are you so calm about this? Aren’t you worried she’s going to reach out now? Wasn’t this exactly why you didn’t want to come back in the first place, you didn’t want to run into her?”

Lena shrugs, already stepping out of her sleep shorts and pulling her shirt over her head. Rummaging through her dresser for her athletic wear, she laughs again. “No, I’m not worried. I’m not scared of the woman.”

“Okay, but _ why _?”

“Because.” Lena squeezes into a sports bra and a clean pair of underwear before she turns back around, hands falling to her hips and giving Sam a pointed look like it should be obvious. “I already know how this is going to go.”

xx

It’s embarrassing, is what it is.

She knows.

It’s mortifying that she’s kept it for this long, that she even travels with it, and if it weren’t so humiliating she probably would have shown Sam herself.

Lena meant to throw them all out, and she nearly did. Of the forty-four unopened, she threw nearly all of them away, not even bothering to read them, not so much as batting an eye at tossing away the letters. They meant nothing to her when she got rid of them and they mean nothing to her now, she doesn’t care that she’ll never know what Kara wanted to say to her when she was “angry at the world” or when she’s “sick in bed,” when she “gets a promotion at work” or she’s “struggling to make a big decision.” It was as revolting to look at the messy scrawl on the envelopes as it is to suffer a weekend-long hangover, back then, and she doesn’t regret it now.

She recycled them, she succeeded at that much, didn’t feel a single impulse to know what was inside.

All but one.

_ Open if you forgive me. _

It’s the _ if, _ that fucking _ if _ that made her hesitate. Of course she hadn’t noticed before, in the few times she’d sifted through the box of envelopes Kara gifted her for Christmas, it had just seemed like another token of comfort among the rest, a potential letter to a potential Lena in a potential situation where she would potentially crave Kara’s words. She hadn’t thought that any of them were pointed, that they’d be specific, that the answer was under her nose all along.

How stupid is that? Lena could have opened this letter at any point before she found out, before New Year’s, she could have read this before Kara told her or before the article aired, the truth would have been inside of this envelope and Kara would have sabotaged herself from the start.

It makes her wonder, then, if Kara wanted her to figure it out all along, what other signs there were that she had never seen.

She didn’t know what meant back then, and she certainly doesn’t now.

It’s been six days since the ceremony, since Lena dug the letter out from the bottom of a suitcase, since she rolled out the wrinkles of the envelope. She feels like she’s spent the entire seventy-two hours just staring at it, like she hasn’t been in and out of the office, like she hasn’t been in and out of SI, like she hasn’t been touring the labs and observing all the new technology and settling out which equipment will be used in her initiative and which will have to be left out. She feels like she’s been sitting in this quiet, shining hotel suite on the orianne gold antique couch, just watching the crumpled envelope laying face-up on the mirrored coffee table before her.

Of course she hasn’t forgiven her, that hasn’t changed, and a stupid letter isn’t going to change that, she knows.

She still glares it down like a petulant child having a staring contest.

It’s just a stupid letter. It doesn’t mean anything, and it doesn’t change what she has to do, what she’s going to do. It doesn’t make a difference, whatever is on the other side.

She picks it up, and, on a whim, before she can talk herself out of it — she rips it open.

The paper inside is stiffly flattened and only slightly less wrinkled than its exterior counterpart. She tucks her index finger under the lip of it, it’s folded twice over like a brochure, and it gives easily with the barest of pressure on her part.

She immediately drops it back on the table, because — no. 

No less than a minute later, she returns with a glass of scotch in hand and she plops back onto the linen couch. But when she takes the first, bracing sip, it burns in her throat and she only just manages not to cough. Glancing at it in disgust, suddenly the idea of a drink makes her queasy, and Lena huffs exasperatedly as she sets this too back on the table. It’s eight in the evening and somehow it still feels too early for a drink.

Her phone rings, and she snatches it up immediately. “What?”

_ “Hello to you too,” _ a deep, feminine voice drawls. _ “You always answer your phone like that, or am I just that special?” _

Lena sighs, sinking back into the cushions and closing her eyes. “Gayle. Where did you get my number?”

There’s an amused hum on the other line. _ “I think your mom really hates you or something, she was way too fucking pleased when I asked for it.” _

“What do you want?”

_ “You really gotta stop assuming the worst of me. What makes you think I’m calling because I want something?” _

“Oh right, sorry, let me guess — you’re calling because you miss me and want to see if I’m free tonight.” Lena rubs her forehead, considers trying for her drink again.

_ “Well, yeah. Not the ‘miss you’ part, but I did want to see what you were up to.” _

Blinking open her eyes, Lena sits up. “You’re not serious.”

_ “Uh, yeah? I had fun the other night, and I’ve got a bottle of Goose in the freezer and no one to share it with, so… do you want to come over?” _

Lena’s immediate instinct is to say no, to go for the quick rejection and return to the matter at hand, her eye catching on the letter on the table. She gets so far as for her lips to form the words, but it dies on her tongue.

It’s not that insane of an idea, and she did admit to herself that Gayle played a significant part in her not losing her mind that night. She didn’t just make it bearable, she sort of made Lena… have fun. Like, really enjoy herself, even if they were just fleeting moments of a genuine laugh or a reprieve of forgetting. There’s a dozen factors that played into that night, and Lena struggles to untangle how they all weave together, and she’s not totally sure how she feels about everything that happened, there’s a lot to unpack, Lena herself is beginning to question the premises she always thought were given facts.

But Gayle? Calling her on Friday night, asking her to come to her apartment?

She hasn’t felt like this in… a while, hasn’t so much as had the inkling of an interest since an embarrassing, drunken night at Siobhan’s over a year ago.

_ “Okay, yeah, got it, fuck me, right?” _ Gayle clears her throat. _ “Forget I asked.” _

“No.” Lena bites her lip, picking up the folded letter in front of her. She can make out the faintest shadow of writing through the slight translucence of the paper, just spots of dark pen scratches. She runs her finger along it, feels out the imprints in the page, wonders if Kara had written this with a firm grip or if she had just been using a shitty pen. 

Lena shakes her head. “What’s your address?”

xx

She tugs at the collar of her cashmere sweater, swallowing thickly. It’s fine, this isn’t a horrible idea, and deep down she knew this was coming anyway. She knew she was going to end up here, she knew all along, it’s been a lingering understanding since the ceremony, of course it would eventually come to this. Of course she wouldn’t be able to bury this, no, not now.

Lena understands.

Raising her hand, she knocks on the familiar door she knows so well.

Fourteen seconds later, it opens, and Kara’s bewildered, lackluster gaze bears down on Lena like the final note of a ballad Lena never managed to pay attention to.


	17. i’m leaving the way i came in with the mess i made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me get one thing straight: an attack on lena or kara is an attack on my family and that's that

“You’re… not my Postmates.”

Lena blinks, her eyes dropping down to Kara’s loose sweatpants and the ratty, food-stained NCU hoodie and back up to an unfamiliar foggy-eyed stare.

“No, I’m not.” Lena lowers her shoulders. “Is this a bad time?”

Kara regards her for a moment, both curious and apprehensive, and for a horrifying second Lena wonders if this was all a mistake, if Kara’s given up on anything where Lena’s irrelevant existence is concerned, if she’ll close the door and Lena will feel like even stickier of a fool than she ever did before.

But Kara bites her lip. “Not at all. Do you wanna come in?”

This is how Lena ends up sitting in the same cushioned chair she sat in all that time ago, a night she once cherished so dearly because of the wonderfully kind people she had met, but now it stains the heels of her memories like old gum on the sole of her shoe. Across from her, Kara sits on the same wide green couch Lena used to lay down across. Kara’s fingers are locked together loosely, one knee slowly swaying back and forth as if to some unheard, gentle rhythm, while Lena simply watches her with just the nervous anticipation for something she knows she has to do.

It doesn’t mean she can’t stall.

Lena gives a bare, half-assed look around the room. “Everything looks the same.”

“Yeah.” Kara rubs her hands together, nods. “Your hair’s shorter, it looks nice.”

She self-consciously touches at the soft ends. “I’ve been growing it out, actually.”

“Oh.”

Before Lena can say anything else, there’s a knock at the door and Kara rushes up to answer it, probably for her takeout. Lena just stares down at her hands, inhaling evenly in order to smother the hammering in her chest to anything slower at all, any more bearable of a beat but not knowing where to even begin with it. 

This is okay, she knew it wouldn’t be so simple as coming in here and making an announcement. She can’t just blurt it out, she can’t just expect that nothing’s different, that it’ll be easy to come back and look her in the eye like there isn’t a sopping wet two-year-long trench dividing them.

When Kara retakes her spot on the couch, it’s with a pint glass in hand instead of the food takeout Lena had been expecting, and it’s— 

She starts, shakes her head. “Is that _ wine _?”

“Um.” Kara looks back and forth between Lena and her drink. “Yeah?”

“I thought you didn’t drink.”

“Oh yeah.” Kara laughs abruptly, startling Lena before she goes in for a hefty gulp. “No, well, I mean shit changes, right?”

Lena only just barely refrains from gawking as the swear falls so seamlessly from Kara’s lips, the effortless manner in which it escapes her like she’s been doing it all her life. The clear pint glass filled three quarters of the way with a deep, blood-red liquid tilts around slowly in Kara’s loose grip, it sits in her hand as fluidly as water, and not for the first time Lena wonders what else Kara has lied about, she begins to wonder if she was right all along in the immediate, first-day assumption that none of it was ever real to begin with.

Kara sets her drink down on the coffee table, quickly rising back to her feet. “Sorry, I’m— it’s just, it’s been a while since I’ve had anyone—” Kara huffs a sigh, rubbing the heel of her palm blearily against her eye before she hastily drops it. “Would you like some?”

Lena still doesn’t understand how someone can both be so unrecognizable to her and also seemingly haven’t changed a bit.

“I’m good… Thank you.”

With a steady nod, Kara slowly falls back onto the couch.

“So,” the blonde starts stiffly, crossing her legs and hunching forward as if she’s only trying to put on a face of indifference and not like it comes naturally. “I’m trying to think of something to say to fill this awkward silence part, but I don’t want to say the wrong thing, and I also don’t want to rush you to say anything just because you feel like you have to, so I’m starting to lean towards just shutting up until you tell me why you’re here, and I’m telling you this because I didn’t want you to think I’m being quiet because I don’t want you here, so.” Kara clears her throat. “Take your time.”

Lena just raises her eyebrows.

“Right, well.” She licks her lips, looking down at the drink in Kara’s hands. “I’ve been thinking.” She looks up just in time to catch the bob of Kara’s throat when she swallows. 

“About what?”

Taking a sharp breath, Lena pulls a folded piece of paper from her coat pocket and sets it on the table between them.

Kara’s polite formalities, her placid patience, it all slips quickly away like a poorly construed mask, and finally there’s a fracture in her composure. Her mouth opens, but she quickly closes it again, and Lena watches her carefully.

“Why do you have that?”

“You gave it to me.”

“No, I know that, I mean—” Kara winces like something physically yanks her back, and in lieu of answering the question, she pulls another long gulp of her drink. “I mean, why do you still have it?”

Despite herself, Lena laughs. “Well, I haven’t forgiven you yet, have I?”

“Yet?”

This is the part she doesn’t want to remember.

“Why did you do it?”

Kara looks like the kind of person Lena wishes she’d known before. “Do what?”

“I’ve been told you have a good reason.” Lena sighs, cocking her jaw. “What is it, then? Why did you write the story? Why did you lie to me?”

Kara stands to refill her glass. Lena watches the stiff coil of her frame, takes note of her thin, wiry figure, and she refuses to think that the weight lost has anything to do with her because that is both far too conceited a thought to entertain as well as it is horrifyingly dangerous.

Kara swirls the red wine around her glass, standing next to the kitchen island while Lena remains unmoving still in the living room chair. “Does it really matter? After all this time, does it honestly make a difference?”

“I don’t know.” Lena almost wishes she’d taken the drink if only to have something to do with her hands. “I know it was about the money, but according to Alex I’d really never get that, so—”

“Wait, you talked to Alex? When?”

Lena glances up, frowning. “Yes, a couple days before. She came to my office.”

“And said what?” Kara’s entire demeanor has shifted yet again, she’s defensive and impatient, she paces back into the living room and hovers just a few feet away. “What did she tell you?”

Lena blinks herself back into the past, as if it’s a struggle to remember a conversation that hasn’t haunted her all this time, even if it’s made up of nothing she can comprehend. 

“Nothing, really,” Lena says evasively. “She told me you both were struggling for rent money, but that I was too privileged to understand.”

“She _ said _ that to you?” 

“I mean, not in so many words, but—” Lena sighs briskly, trying to decipher the manic look in Kara’s eyes. “Well, she’s not exactly wrong, is she?”

“Is that all she said?”

“What does it even matter what she said?” Lena scoffs, coming to her feet as well, and she brushes passed Kara. Yes, okay? She _ will _ take that drink, because she doesn’t know how she ever expected to get through this without it, and she hates how familiarly she flips open the right cupboard for a glass. “She didn’t say anything. She said you’re an angel walking the earth and she asked me to forgive you, and I threatened to call security on her.”

“…Did you?” 

Lena sets the bottle down with a harsh thud before she turns back around. “Yes, Kara, I absolutely called security on another employee in the building.” After taking a swift mouthful of the painfully cheap wine, Lena grimaces. “Did you really not send her to talk to me for you?”

“No.” Kara’s jaw ripples with tension. “I didn’t even know she went.”

“Were you going to?”

“Going to what?”

“To find me?” Lena hates the way her voice wavers, and it begins to rush out of her like steam. “To explain why you lied? If I hadn’t told you that I never wanted to see you again, would you have tried to stop me from leaving?”

This is the part she wishes she’d forget.

Kara softens. “Is there a right answer to that?”

_ Probably not. _ “Yes.”

“No.” Kara shrugs, drumming her fingers against the tilted slope of her glass, not meeting Lena’s eye. “No, I didn’t think it mattered anymore. You uh, you asked me for one thing, just this one simple, essential thing and I couldn’t even give you that. So, what was the point?”

“So it was all for nothing, then?” Lena can’t tell the difference between a smile and a grimace, not when her mouth twists like this. “That’s what you’re saying, right? I really meant so little to you that you could just walk away like it was nothing?”

Kara leans forward over the kitchen island, rubbing her face tiredly as if trying to wipe off a fog, and for the first time Lena wonders if this isn’t Kara’s first drink.

“No,” Kara mutters, her face half-concealed by the fist braced into her cheek. “No, Lena, it wasn’t something I could just walk away from, believe me. But how was I supposed to— I mean, how _ sick _ would I have to be to ask you to forgive me when I know I’ll never deserve it?”

Lena pulls back, reigns back in her hot temper long enough to regard Kara, the way her mouth droops with detached stoicism, the slouched posture, the kind of greasy hair like she’s just gotten out of a long shift.

“You should throw that thing out.” Kara lifts her head, rubbing her eyes. “You’re not gonna like it.”

Lena looks across to the living room where the letter remains untouched on the table. “Why?”

“Because it’s crap,” Kara laughs, humorless and hollow. “It was stupid to even fantasize that what I did would ever be okay, that writing that letter served a purpose and that there would ever come a day you’d actually open it. It’s— It’s unfair, and frankly it’s insulting. To you, I mean. So, yeah.” Kara shrugs again, reaching back for her wine. “You should throw it out.”

_ Forgiveness isn’t something you do for someone else. _

Lena firmly sets her jaw. “You don’t seem surprised to see me. Why?”

“I figured it was a matter of time after the other night. I know I caught you off guard, my being there. I really am sorry for that, by the way.”

“Stop apologizing for that.”

Kara looks up wearily, pausing. “Okay. I just, I figured you’d reach out eventually, now that you’re back.”

“Why?” Lena asks forcefully, her heart rate picking up its pace in her ears like a sisyphean crescendo.

“To remind me to leave you alone, stay out of your way? I get it, it’s fine, I’ll make sure it won’t happen again.” 

“That’s why you think I’m here?”

“Isn’t it?” Kara’s voice dips, just the barest indent on its fallout, and the glimpse of remorse doesn’t disappear, it paints itself shamelessly across her face. “I mean, I know you’re not here because you forgive me, so, what else is there?”

“You’re right, I haven’t.” Lena’s eye drops to Kara’s pale hands, the barest tremble in her knuckles. “And you absolutely don’t deserve it.” 

“Yeah, exactly, so.”

_ It’s a gift you give yourself. _

“But maybe I’m going to anyway.”

Kara’s eyes snap up like a crack of thunder, and there’s a burning perplexity murmuring behind her cloudy irises, both faint and sharp.

“Going to… what?”

“Here’s how this will go.” Lena goes to take another steadying drink, but as soon as the sour aroma of it hits her nose, she grimaces and she sets it back down with a shake of her head. “Your sister said this stupid thing that I haven’t been able to get out of my head for nearly two years now, and honestly even if I might actually hate her for it, I think she was right.”

The steady vacancy of Kara’s stare makes Lena dizzy, it makes her already regret this, because there’s a very explicit definition of insanity and oh, what a field day _ that _ psychologist would have with Lena.

“Because I am finally in a good place, I finally have everything I’ve ever wanted and I have everyone I’ll ever need already in my life.”

If her throat feels tight, if her voice starts to choke up like there’s some subconscious part trying to hold her back from saying this, neither of them acknowledge it.

“But, for god knows what reason, you are the one thing I can’t get over. Everywhere I go, everything I do, you’re always just _ there. _” Lena sighs, dropping her hands to the edge of the kitchen island, her grip loose and tired. “I thought I could manage it on my own, that I didn’t need anyone else, especially not you. But I can’t keep doing this. I… I need to get over you if I’m going to move on, so I can start truly living my life again.”

Kara’s mouth pinches small, and the quiet is stifling enough to make Lena consider downing the rest of this horrid wine because right now the room is so unbearably still, the floor has never felt so flat beneath her feet, and this cold moment of suspension where Kara just stares back her with nothing in her gaze, it is exactly why survival leaves so bitter of an aftertaste.

And then—

She’s laughing.

Sharp, sudden, deep rumbling laughs, Kara is laughing so hard she has to sit down on one of the island stools, slumping over the fake granite, her shoulders shaking. 

If she weren’t so painfully sober, she’d think she was dreaming.

“I’m sorry,” Lena says flatly. “But what the fuck is so funny about this?”

Kara’s hands fall from her face to the counter in a smack, her giggles wet and clouded. “It’s just— It’s, it’s funny because—” Kara snorts, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand before she runs it messily through her oily hair. It only dishevels it further, makes the shiny glean more prominent under the fluorescent glow, and Lena’s never recognized anyone less. 

“It’s funny because I _ started _ living my life the day that I met you.” Kara tilts her head, and the smile bleeds away from her face, leaving her eyes as empty as Lena’s thoughts. “And I’ve known since the day you left that I probably wouldn’t ever be able to again, not like that. Like, trust me, I’ve long since accepted that I brought this on myself and I’ve dealt with that, but c’mon you have to admit it’s kind of funny. You can’t live with me, I can’t live without you? I swear that’s the plot to a dozen different Hollywood blockbusters.”

A tension Lena hadn’t realized she’d been holding deflates, suddenly, it escapes her like the taut length of a pulled spring falling compact. 

Lena spent so long running from this, she buried herself in every outlet she could find, for a million different reasons. Part of it was about proving she never needed or cared all that much about Kara, and then it was about proving she was better off alone anyway. Who was she proving this to, really? Because it’s become painfully clear no one else cares, that it makes no difference to Sam or Lillian or Jack or Gayle or whoever at all whether she’s still hung up on this or not. 

The point is that the rest of the world has moved on, and she needs to too. 

Seeing Kara like this, this pasty-skinned mirror of someone else, when all Lena’s ever wanted was to hate her, it’s exhausting to face the truth of the matter that she doesn’t hate her, not even in the slightest, she never did. She wants to vomit because it’s horrifying how she still _ cares _ for Kara, that how she’s doing even matters to Lena, and god, it makes her _ wonder. _

Wonder for all this time she spent working to prove a lie, for all this time she wasted trying to make sense of something that had none, when all she needed was to come back here. Running from it hasn’t gotten her anywhere, it’s only put distance between herself and her body and all that it’s rid her of is the chance of finding a home again in herself.

She spent two years off in search of a peace that could only be found by facing the very thing she was running from, it was right here all along. 

“What happened to you?” Lena’s eyes scrape over her. “Kara, that’s bullshit, _ what? _ Since when did you become the kind of person that _ needs _ someone else to be happy?” 

“That’s not what I said.” Kara shakes her head, her lips pursing like she doesn’t expect Lena to understand. She gestures to Lena’s drink. “Are you gonna finish that?”

Lena pulls it out of her reach. “No, seriously, Kara what the fuck? Is this a joke?” 

Kara doesn’t answer her, but she does meet Lena’s gaze pointedly, not looking sheepish in the slightest, only as if she’s proving something. Lena’s hand stays resolutely over her drink, and Kara just sighs, rising from her seat to make for the opened bottle left in front of the cupboards behind Lena. Lena doesn’t stop her. She doesn’t turn around, just listens to the slow shuffling of Kara’s socked feet over the hardwood floor, the pour of the wine sloshing into the glass. Kara doesn’t immediately return, she stays behind Lena sipping her drink, and Lena’s knuckles grow white around her own.

“This should make me feel better,” Lena mutters.

“What should?”

Lena’s mouth twists. “You know, I used to wish I’d never met you.”

Kara laughs, and Lena doesn’t get the joke. “I don’t think that’s changed.”

“I think it should be the other way around.” Lena spins to face Kara, her arms crossing. “I think you should be the one wishing you’d never met me.”

Kara tilts her head to the side, searching. “I’m still not really sure I get why you’re here.”

Is it selfish to heal? Is it a possible thing to do without relinquishing nobility, or does it by definition require a certain level of self-indulgence?

“I’m here to get us passed this, however it is that we do that,” Lena says simply, clearing her throat and putting on a far stronger face than she feels. “And then I’m leaving. I’m hiring someone to run the National City base of L-Corp and I’m going back to Metropolis by the end of the year. 

“And I think this will be good for you, too. You’ll get over it. Me.” Lena digs her nails into her palm. “I promise. So, we have four months.”

Kara stares at her like she was never really there at all. 

“Four months for… what, exactly?”

“To make me forgive you. And then I’m gone.”

xx

“Lena, I don’t know if you know this, but just because my professional title is ‘doctor,’ that does not mean I’m certified to handle all of your breakdowns.”

Across the white linen of the restaurant table, Lena raises her eyebrows. “This isn’t a breakdown.”

“Where’s our waiter?” Sam looks around them, desperate. “I need a drink.”

“It’s nine in the morning.”

“So I’ll order a damn mimosa.” Not finding him anywhere, Sam turns back to Lena. “Have you lost your freaking mind? Seriously, just tell me now how worried I have to be, scale of impulsive-online-shopping-spree to mass-egomaniac-manslaughter?”

“You don’t have to be worried at all.”

“That attitude, that right there?” Sam points an accusing finger in her face, and Lena raises her eyebrows bemusedly. “That is exactly why I’m nervous.”

She brushes her hand away. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you? Because the last time you spoke to this woman you almost—”

“I swear if you mention the casserole one more time, you _ will _ have something to worry about.”

Sam’s elbows drop to the table, and she huffs, shaking her head. “You know what? I think I might be the one who needs therapy after all of this is finished.”

“I can recommend you someone,” Lena offers. “I have actually spoken with some of the most renowned psychologists in the country.”

Sam sits up agitatedly. “How, Lena? _ How? _ When do you have time for all of this shit you get up to?”

Lena catches the eye of their waiter with a smile, and he quickly stops by. “We will actually take that mimosa pitcher after all, please,” she tells him, and with a note of affirmation he takes off again.

“It’s, fine, alright?” Lena sits forward. “I have a plan. I took notes from the best couples’ therapists nation-wide and—”

“_ Couples’ therapy? _” Sam exclaims, the high creaking pitch of her voice drawing the attention of a few tables around them. “Lena, I’m begging you, tell me you’re not going to start seeing her again.”

“Oh, fuck no.” Lena grimaces like she’s just had something sour. “We aren’t going to a shrink, and we’re not jumping right back into whatever that was before. I was just doing… research.”

“Research,” Sam echoes weakly. 

“Yes. Like I said, I have a plan.”

“Don’t couples’ therapists work on like, actually rebuilding relationships, helping bring two people back together? Not helping you forget about an old ex.”

“I know, but. Their main goal is usually to improve communication and reestablish a broken trust of some kind, whether it’s literal, figurative, emotional, whatever. I don’t need to trust her again, just forgive her, but most often it’s the same path. I know it all sounds a bit silly, but I have it figured out. And it’ll be good for the both of us, anyway.” Lena sighs, pursing her lips as her eyes cloud over. “You should have seen her, Sam, she was…”

“Miserable?” 

Lena tuts quietly, shaking her head. “Mm, no, not really, just… different. Maybe she is but, she just… One second she seems like the person I thought I always knew, and the next she’s a stranger.”

The waiter returns with a fat, round-bottomed pitcher of the orange bubbling cocktail, and he swiftly pours them both a glass. Lena’s only just thanking him by the time Sam’s already halfway through her flute, and Lena rolls her eyes. 

Clearing her throat of the champagne, Sam sits forward. “Could be both, you know. It’s been two years, you’re both completely different people. And I mean, I know you don’t really want to hear this, but at the very least I think she _ was _ the person you got to know back then, that wasn’t a lie.” At Lena’s penetrating frown, Sam quickly goes on. “Obviously I didn’t get to know her as much as you, and of course you would know best, I just mean—”

“It’s okay,” Lena gently interrupts. “I’m not going to freak out. Surprisingly, I really am okay with this. Frankly I think you’re right.”

Her glass halfway to her mouth, Sam stops short. “Really?”

Lena hums her agreement, eyeing her own glass but making no move for it. “It was a little too melodramatic to think someone is truly that deceptive, wasn’t it? That she’s that much of a villain, that it was all just a sham. That was never… I don’t think that was what scared me.”

Sam shakes her head bewilderedly, sitting forward again. “Okay you lost me again. If you believe that she was being genuine with you, that the feelings weren’t fake, then what’s the problem? You sound like you’ve already forgiven her.”

Lena opens her mouth to answer, but nothing comes out, and she finds she doesn’t actually have the words for it, she isn’t quite sure how to explain herself, not in a way Sam would understand. She doesn’t know how to articulate the tranquility she’s spent so long chasing that now rests within her, and she’s not quite sure herself why that isn’t enough. Maybe it’s the acknowledgment to herself, accepting that she hasn’t moved on, recognizing what she still has to work through that’s brought her this peace, but fuck, it’s not so easy to forgive as simply choosing to. There’s still things to work on, the roots of issues she can hardly wrap her brain around, there is more to uncover, and she’s not sure what that is but she knows it’s there. And the eloquence to explain this to Sam now, it escapes her, and Lena drops her gaze.

“It’s complicated,” she says quietly. “I haven’t, I can’t — I need to do this, that much I know.”

“That’s okay,” Sam is quick to assure. “You don’t have to explain all the details, I just — you know me, I worry, alright? But I do trust you know what you’re doing, Lena. And thank you for telling me, by the way.” Sam reaches across the table to tap at Lena’s hand, just a soft reminder of affection and nothing heavier than this moment warrants. “It means a lot.”

“Apparently I can only go to the extremes.” Lena shrugs, echoing Sam’s words from the week before. “Willing to blurt it all out to anyone that listens now, or something.”

Sam tosses her napkin at her indignantly. “Oh shut up. I swear, if you tell that Marsh girl any of this, then we’re _ all _ going to have something to worry about.”

She does chuckle good-naturedly, but Lena winces through her smile, because she very blatantly blew off Gayle the other night. The blonde hadn’t reached out to her when Lena never showed up the other night because she had gone to Kara’s instead, and Lena hadn’t thought to even say anything until the next night, and by then it’d be silly to. Still, she feels guilty, enough so to reach out at some point in the near future and apologize. Because she likes Gayle, really, for whatever reason, and Lena is feeling notably open-minded about putting herself out on a limb for something as terrifying as a prospective friendship.

Halfway through the pitcher (on Sam’s part, Lena doesn’t touch her own glass) and a few appetizers later, Sam asks if Lena’s ready to call for the bill when Lena waves her off.

“It’s alright, I’m not leaving just yet, I’ll take care of it.”

Sam’s eyebrows knit together. “You’re not leaving?”

Lena refuses to be self-conscious about this, because they’re both adults, and she just spent the better part of their brunch hour rationalizing it all to Sam anyway. 

“No,” she draws out slowly, picking at her cuticles absently. “Kara’s meeting me here in a bit, actually.”

Sam’s mouth drops open again. “What, seriously? I thought you were going to give her some time to decide.”

“I have, it’s been two days.”

“Oh, it’s barely been thirty-six hours.”

Lena huffs, waving her off. “Yes, thank you, but she’ll be here any minute so, get out of here.”

Sam does, but not with more grumbling and teasing, and Lena stands to hug her goodbye. Once she’s left alone, Lena fiddles with the gold band of her watch, running her fingers softly over its face, and she considers texting Kara to ask if she’s on her way before thinking better of it. While there’s the chance she has changed her phone number since Lena last knew her, it probably isn’t likely considering Kara never moved. Although Lena did delete her contact, it’s a string of digits that she’s never managed to actually forget. It was probably because of how long she spent forcefully thinking about how she would hate to remember the number that made it stick in her memory, and so Lena can easily pick up the phone and contact her, but she refrains. It feels… inappropriate, and even though Lena is the one here with tense boundaries to set, she feels as if she should touch base with Kara first before re-opening that method of communication. 

“Hey, sorry.” Kara breathlessly comes rushing up to the table, patting down her loose, clean white tee-shirt as she takes the seat across from Lena. “Trains were a bitch, there was a delay on the B-line, sorry if you were waiting long.” And then, taking in the half-empty mimosa pitcher and the used glass that Sam had left behind, she frowns. “You get started without me?”

Instead of answering, Lena just passes over her untouched drink, setting it down in front of Kara, who just looks up at her expectantly.

Lena sits back. “You swear now.”

“What?”

“You never used to swear. I actually tried to trick you into it dozens of times, but you never did.”

“Oh.” Kara seems to not know how to answer the unspoken question, and her eyeline drops to the flat champagne in front of her now but she holds back from taking it. “Uh, yeah, I dunno. Probably just Alex’s influence, I guess.”

It’s not an answer that means anything, because as far as Lena knows, Alex has been one to swear like a sailor all her life, so nothing about that should be any different now, but she doesn’t remark on it.

“And how is she? Your sister.”

“She’s good, yeah, she’s really good, thanks.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.” 

Kara takes the drink, and Lena watches her. She wants to find amusement in how, just like Sam, she swallows down half of it in one go, she honestly wants to be endeared by the flat, awkward smile Kara gives her when she sets it back down and finds Lena watching her, but it just leaves her far more uncertain about this than she was half an hour ago with Sam.

“So,” Kara breaks the silence. “I thought about what you said.”

“And?”

“And… sure, I guess.”

Lena raises an eyebrow, skeptical. “You guess?”

Kara picks the drink back up again, but she doesn’t immediately go in for it. “I mean, yeah, okay. Yes, whatever you need, I’m happy to… to…”

“Help?” Lena asks wryly.

Kara winces. “Kinda sounds bad when you put it like that, doesn’t it?”

“That’s essentially what I’m asking for.” Lena shrugs, and Kara takes a deep breath before she finally drinks again, quickly finishing the small glass. “Might as well call it what it is.”

“Right.” Kara rubs her mouth with the back of her hand and goes to refill her glass. “Okay, well like I said, I’m happy to either way, but I’ve gotta admit I still don’t get _ what _ I’m agreeing to.”

“It’s not as complicated as it sounds.”

“I don’t know if it’s as simple as you think, either.”

The underlying challenge to Kara’s tone, the brisk honesty, it reminds Lena of Gayle for a moment, and while it was amusing on the rich blonde heiress, on Kara it’s just… confusing. 

Lena sighs, the elasticity of a strained rubber band pulling her in all directions again, a tension she thought she’d gotten rid of sucking her back to stillness.

“There’s just one thing I want to be clear on,” Lena explains delicately. “And I know this might be difficult but—”

“I know we’re not getting back together, you don’t have to spell that one out,” Kara interjects with a surprising tongue-in-cheek smile, like a young child eager to prove they’ve gotten a problem right, and Lena can’t explain what about it causes such a sharp, sudden throb in her chest.

“That assumes we were ever actually together to begin with, doesn’t it?”

The humor sinks immediately from Kara’s eyes, falls back inextricably within her out of Lena’s sight, and Lena has no time to feel anything about that.

“No, I wasn’t going to ‘spell that one out’ for you because I know it’s not anything I need to clarify.” Lena loosens her jaw, taking small, subtle breaths to still her erratic heart. “No, I just have one rule.”

Kara’s brow twitches with a frown, the way she tilts her head is something Lena used to find cute, but they are so far from anything as naive as a misunderstanding here.

“What is it?” Kara asks, the kind of soft for someone who already knows.

It feels almost redundant to say. “Don’t lie to me, about anything. Ever.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“I mean it. I don’t care if you think it’s something I don’t want to know. If I ask, you have to tell me.”

A nod. “Okay.”

“And I’ll do the same.” Lena is probably just assuring no one except her own conscience at this point. “Not like I have anything to hide, but I will. If this is going to work, this is how it has to be.”

“I don’t have anything to hide,” Kara says, not as if she’s pointing something out in her defense, but like this is her first order of honesty.

“Not anymore, you mean.”

Kara’s gaze falls to somewhere lower, and she scoots her seat forward before she takes another sip of the mimosa. “So, how does this work, then?”

Lena twists around, reaching into the purse hanging on the back of her chair, and she pulls out a piece of paper. Kara stiffens at first, but when Lena flattens out a sheet composed exclusively of Lena’s own neat writing, the blonde’s shoulders loosen.

“What’s that?”

“A list.”

“Of?”

“Exercises, activities, things that are going to help us speed this along.”

Kara laughs, but when Lena’s face remains mute and calm, her smile falls away and she looks back and forth between Lena and the paper. “Wait, like actually?”

Lena drops her hand over the note. “By no means am I trying to force you into this, so if you’re not going to take it seriously then you might as well go now.”

“No! No.” Kara sits up immediately, running her hand back through her hair before she clasps her fingers together on the table. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” She sighs, and the brief, patient look she gives Lena is reminiscent like deja-vu. “What’s on it?”

Lena’s not sure if it’s the glimpse into the person she used to know, or if it’s the way it disappears that reassures her, she’s not sure which is the comfort and which is the omen.

“This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but I can’t just choose to forgive you and call it a day. Believe me, I’ve tried.” Lena picks up the paper and holds it out to Kara like this is a business meeting, in no mood to go through the items verbally. “I’ve compiled this list of exercises meant to promote and foster the process of forgiving. Most all professionals in the field agree that these all aid in stomping out any lingering resentment or anger in either party.”

Kara eyes the page with an unreadable expression, and she flips it over to find more words on the backside as well. She looks up at Lena wearily. “Are you quoting a manual or something?”

“Don’t start.”

Kara hums, looking over the tasks once more, before she pauses again. “What field?”

Lena blinks. “What?”

“You said professionals in the field. I’m asking — what field?”

Lena can only hope that the flush under her collar doesn’t spread any further, that it’s not noticeable underneath the stupid tan Lillian made her get before she left Metropolis. Without thinking too much about it, she reaches across to take back her mimosa glass. When she looks back up, Kara’s smile is far softer than it should be, and not in a tender or nurturing way, but rather the faint shadow of something brighter, and again Lena can’t shake the distinct feeling that Kara is deliberately holding back something she thinks Lena wouldn’t understand.

“You know, professionals,” Lena finally answers, evasive, but Kara just raises her eyebrows in response and the corner of her mouth perks up.

“I mean, if we’re being honest with each other now, then you should probably—”

“I was always honest with you.”

Kara’s playful smile once more falls away, but Lena refuses the guilt over this one, she locks it out with a firm slam from her skull.

Lena finishes the drink and hands back the empty glass.

She takes a deep breath. “Look, I just spoke with some counselors who specialize in mending defective relationships, that’s all.”

“I thought this wasn’t a relationship.” There’s no witty quip to Kara’s tone, and Lena knows she shouldn’t meet her eye, she knows it gleans with an unshed, unbearable _ nothing _ that she would never want to see, but she looks. Of course she does.

Kara doesn’t even mean it as a joke, and perhaps that’s the worst part.

“Please don’t do that,” Lena says quietly. 

Kara only moves to refill the glass from the pitcher. “So, I still feel like I’m missing something. I’m not trying to be difficult,” she quickly adds, but Lena’s eye is caught on the ripple of tendons in Kara’s forearm, the easy flex of the muscle, how fluid the motion is, the unwavering grip on the glass handle. 

“I just want to make sure I know what your expectations are,” Kara continues. “Because I don’t want to disappoint you.”

She averts her gaze. “Right, because you do that so well already.”

She of course doesn’t mean for it to slip out, she doesn’t mean to be so passive aggressive to everything that Kara says, because each and every biting, snide remark is just an indication of how Lena can’t maintain her composure for even two minutes, and it’s more embarrassing than it is satisfying. But Kara doesn’t seem offended by this one, she inclines back in her chair languidly and smiles like she’s encouraging Lena to keep going, like she’s impressed, like she’s proud, and Lena doesn’t know what to make of that.

“Again, it’s not so complicated as you’re making it out to be.” Lena leans forward to refer to the paper again. “We work through these, together, and there’s more than enough time to finish them all by the holidays, even with my hectic schedule.”

“And these?” Kara flips it over and runs her finger along the midline. “What are the ‘tips’ for?”

“Exactly that.” Lena plucks up the mimosa glass, and she’s not quite sure when they started sharing one because she hadn’t had the stomach for a drink before, but Kara is unphased as Lena takes a sip. “Just general notes of advice on our approach, things to keep in mind.”

Lena watches Kara carefully, how her jaw is tense when she looks back up, and not with the apathy Lena’s become accustomed to dealing with these last couple of days, but rather a peek of concern, tentative like snowfall.

“You’re sure about this?” Kara asks gently, but her prying eyes only make Lena want to hide even more.

“Yes.” Lena snatches the paper back. “If you have any better ideas, I’m happy to hear them. Otherwise this is how it’s going to be, so you can either stay or you can go now and I’ll figure this out on my own. It’s your choice.” 

Kara looks as if there’s a joke she wants to make, like she’s biting back a laugh, but whatever it is, she doesn’t say it and simply takes the mimosa back again from Lena. 

“Of course I’ll stay, Lena.” Kara smiles, a tender replica of one that Lena used to recognize, the curve of her pink mouth only slightly visible behind the small flute glass. 

She wonders if it’s too childish and impractical to add a second rule stating that Kara’s no longer allowed to say Lena’s name, not in any shape or form.

She asks for the check.

xx

Lena doesn’t get the chance to see Kara again for another week and a half.

Things are picking up at L-Corp, and with the latest bout of donations from the Lasker fundraiser, she was right, they’re far ahead of schedule on the financial side of things, but this means that the technological aspect with SI is nowhere near ready for moving forward. Rather than push Jack to rush developments on his end, Lena’s been conference-calling in with the board of directors back in Metropolis to determine their next steps. Expansion has been their main drive, it’s an essential component of their mission — reach as many people in need of care as possible. Every program and every dime spent has been set in motion with a single goal in mind of taking them closer to the step after that, to following their ten-year plan for L-Corp and SI’s partnership.

But now that they’re ahead schedule and overshot for funds, there’s wiggle-room, there’s time to have these conversations about programs that had been previously shelved for a magical later time, visions Lena had had when they first began but no space to make them happen. It would either be Lillian insisting that her proposal did nothing to move this organization forward in the long-run, that it was a dead-end of charity, or it was her board advising her that she was trying to take on too much at once, too soon.

The program Lena felt strongest about was an initiative to provide better mental health care in at-risk youth programs. While the primary mission of the organization is to provide accessible health care to people and families who normally are given cheaper, second-hand services, to ensure that those who can’t afford it are given the opportunity to receive the same leading benefits that only money can get you, this has mainly focused on their physical health. The technology that SI is and will be developing over the next decade covers a variety of domains — easier and cheaper-to-operate imaging machines, cheaper augmentative and alternative communication devices, updated medical equipment in the day-to-day physician check-up offices, advanced 3D printers for the opportunity to participate in cutting-edge, experimental treatments and stay up to date on the latest upgrades. This is the central aim of L-Corp and Spheerical Industries — but it’s left little room for ensuring that the people they are reaching out to also receive _ mental _ health care aside from yearly check-ups with their primary care physicians. Anything beyond that isn’t prospected to be under L-Corp’s coverage. It’s a battle Lena’s been fighting and losing for a year now. Incorporating mental health services takes far too much _ time, _ they’ve said, time that they just don’t have and time that they can’t buy, not in the same way they can with physical health services. The “ugly truth,” as Lillian likes to put it, is that trying to address them all will about double their projections for their ten-year plan, and it’s simply too ambitious an initiative for them to take on.

But now, the board of directors can’t see her smile but Lillian can certainly hear it when Lena brings up her ideas again, and slowly their objections begin to falter as Lena argues their stance. L-Corp is far more prominent an organization than any of them had predicted when they first began, and Lena feels gracious enough to even verbally point out how Lillian can be thanked for capitalizing on Lena’s popularity and ensuring it lasted longer than just a few months of typical press interest. Because while the article is a significant factor to thank for Lena’s surge, that hype would have dwindled out within six months at the latest if Lillian hadn’t strategically woven Lena back into the public eye with a careful, calculating poignancy.

And because of this, because of how everything has fallen together and because of the convenience of Lena currently being in National City, she is more than happy to test-run her ideas here.

When the other board members hang up, and it’s just her and Lillian left on the line, she hears a low, wry chuckle through the static.

_ “Well played, Lena.” _

Lillian says nothing else, and Lena has no response to her mother’s words other than a self-satisfied smile tucked low to her chest.

The next week and half are spent on the logistics and preparations. Her ideas presented over the phone are just that: ideas. Before she can actually put anything into motion, she needs to prove to the board that this will be a valuable, worthwhile commodity, that it’s a resource people and faculty will take advantage of. She has to draw up projections, make phone calls to local hospitals, communicate with other local nonprofits working with adolescents and children. The board wants to see cold numbers showing exactly how well this is going to work before they approve anything.

She doesn’t forget, of course she doesn’t, the digits of a phone number swim in the back of her mind like a subtle mist seeping around the corner. 

She just pushes it to the side, is all.

The first chance she has at a free hour, though, is on a Thursday. It’s by accident that she has a moment to breathe, she has a meeting end early and the next one gets pushed off a little later, and it was all too last-minute to schedule anything else in. She could take the time to catch up on her paperwork, to keep researching for her presentation to the board, but she decides to grant herself the advantage of a free lunch hour.

But she doesn’t call Kara.

A different blonde strolls through her office doors, wearing pale blue paperbag shorts and a loose-flowing white blouse, and her smile is far more pleased than it should be.

Though after glancing around Lena’s office with pursed lips, Gayle huffs.

“I haven’t even said anything and you’re already annoyed.” Bemusedly, Lena shuts her laptop. “What is it?”

Gayle pushes her black sunglasses back over her hair and she crosses her arms. “I’m not seeing any flowers.”

“And why would I have flowers in my office?”

“An apology should always have flowers.”

“Who said anything about an apology?”

Gayle pointedly stands by the two seats in front of Lena’s desk, not sitting down as if to prove something. “I waited nearly half an hour for you like a dumbass. It’s really rude to stand someone up, you know.”

“A whole thirty minutes?” Lena laughs, rising up from her seat and making for the bar cart. “You know it would have taken me that long to get there anyway?”

Gayle lifts her chin pridefully, looking around the room with a critical eye, and she seems to get tired on her comically high wedges because she finally drops back down to one of the chairs. “Whatever. It would’ve taken you twenty if you’d hurried, you know I’m worth it.”

“You’re awfully needy for someone who keep saying they don’t care about me,” Lena remarks, picking up her decanter. “You want a drink?”

Gayle nods her on impatiently like Lena shouldn’t even have to ask. “And you’re pretty fuckin’ rude for someone who should be grovelling. I am glad you called though.”

“Oh?” Lena hands her a full glass of the ember-tinted scotch, and Gayle takes it eagerly. Though as Lena sits down beside her, Gayle notices her empty hands and frowns.

“Are you not having one?”

Lena flicks her wrist. “No, haven’t really been feeling it lately.”

Gayle makes a quiet, skeptical _ hmph _ as she takes the first sip, and she smacks her lips together. “But anyway, I was gonna say, I have a thing this weekend and I was wondering if you’d wanna come with me.”

Lena raises an eyebrow. “A thing?”

“There’s this like, stupid cruise this weekend, it’s a promotional thing for some movie my dad’s bank is backing. Anyway, he’s making me go, told me to bring somebody hot but Dianna bailed at the last minute.”

“Dianna?”

“A friend that was supposed to go with me. Unlike you, I actually have real friends, and I don’t need a parent to buy me all of them.”

Chuckling, Lena sits up straighter. “But you do think I’m hot.”

“Sure, I’m not blind. Don’t act like you’re humble, you know you are. Half the reason the country is so fucking obsessed with you is because most of them want to sleep with you.”

The blunt, admittedly backhanded flattery is off-putting, but not in the worst way imaginable. It doesn’t make Lena blush, it doesn’t give her butterflies, but there’s another liquid-like spread of warmth, a heightened level of content that’s of course unfamiliar, but quickly becoming a trademark of her time spent around Gayle.

A vacation would be nice, to say the least, and one as short as a weekend would be ideal. She’d be crunching her work together tonight and tomorrow to clear enough time for it, probably wouldn’t get any sleep, but she could make it work, in theory. Gayle’s easy-going enough, leaned back in her seat with a natural impartiality that Lena might even call _ appealing. _ But it only reaches a certain point, stops around the time Lena realizes how it reminds her of Kara.

Not the Kara she knew, not the one she understood, not the one she was once in love with, but that Kara that is today, the Kara that truly is.

“Thank you for the invite, but I don’t know if I can.” Lena smiles apologetically, and honestly the rejection surprises herself a little. “I, um, I’m trying to get this new project started right now, and I’m not sure I can take a whole weekend off.”

It’s more or less the truth, so why does it feel like she’s lying?

Gayle waves indifferently, hiking her foot up onto the chair and draping her arms over her elevated knee, her drink dangling from long fingers. “No worries, you can think about it and let me know by tomorrow. I still haven’t texted Bella anyway, I’ll see if she’s free.”

“Bella?”

“Thorne.”

Lena shrugs slightly. “I don’t know who that is.”

Gayle just stares at her with a knitted brow like Lena is a complete stranger. “You’re really weird, you know that?”

Lena laughs when Gayle takes a long drink, as if washing away her aversion to Lena.

“Whatever, just let me know, okay?” Setting her half-full glass down on the edge of Lena’s desk, Gayle stretches out her joints with a small groan before collapsing back loosely. “I’m starving, do they deliver takeout this high up, or do we have to call a helicopter?”

Before Lena can berate her for being such a brat about _ everything, _two staccato beeps come through her office phone, and Lena sighs stretching out across her desk for the answer button. “Yes, Jane?”

_ “Ms. Luthor, I’m sorry I know you’re taking an early lunch, but there’s a Ms. Danvers here to see you, and she doesn’t have an appointment. Should I send her away or…?” _

Lena stumbles off her seat to pick up the receiver, taking the phone off speaker, and beside her Gayle’s jaw drops nearly to the floor.

“Oh my god,” Gayle laughs, practically chortling as she hunches forward and tries to lean in for a listen to the phone, but Lena quickly rushes back around the side of her desk, tugging the dialer along with her in a mess of wires.

_ “Ms. Luthor?” _

“Shut up,” Lena hisses to Gayle with the mouthpiece pressed into her shoulder, shooting daggers at the blonde with her eyes before she hastily turns back into the phone. “Um, Jane, can you just, um… Can you ask for her first name?”

Gayle is mouthing things at her with an incredulous expression, nothing Lena can read and she waves at her to quit being so… just _ herself _ before her assistant speaks up again.

_ “She says her name is Kara. Really, I can just have her make an appointment.” _

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Lena closes her eyes. What is she even doing here? Like, okay, sure, they haven’t spoken since brunch, but they ended it on fine, clear terms.Lena promised she’d be in touch and they could establish what their schedules were like. But she can’t think of any good reason for her to simply show up unannounced, not even thinking to send a text ahead. Honestly, what is it with these Danvers women?

With a reluctant sigh, Lena looks to Gayle with apology in every feature. Biting her lip, Lena answers her assistant. “No, it’s fine, just give me one second and I’ll be right there.”

Lena hangs up, and Gayle has a ridiculously smug grin on her face, arms crossed. “Oh, and who was that?” she asks cheekily.

Lena avoids her eye, tidying up her desk. “Stop it, it’s none of your business.”

“Sweetie you made it my business. Is this a thing now? Should I expect a new couple’s pic in the tabloids sometime soon? I do love a good scoop. Oh, wait, please tell me we’re all gonna have lunch together, I would _ love _ to get to know your girlfriend.”

Scoffing, Lena comes back around the desk to shoo her off. “She’s not my girlfriend. Can you just go, please? I’m sorry, I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

“You mean you’re gonna make up what was already a make-up lunch?”

Lena scowls.

Gayle’s a perfect portrait of cocky with her raised eyebrows and the curve of her smirk, but Lena pointedly ignores her and just ushers her out aggravatedly. Gayle resists, but it seems like it’s only to get under Lena’s skin because she laughs the entire way to the door, head tossed back and her blonde hair getting in Lena’s face.

Just as Lena reaches around her to pull the door open, Gayle suddenly gasps and stomps her foot in place, smacking her hand to slam the door. “Wait, wait, is she the reason you blew me off?”

At Lena’s weak, flippant scoff, how she goes to open the door again, this is apparently all the answer Gayle needs because she just smacks it shut once more. 

“Oh fuck she _ is,” _ Gayle squeals, grinning like mad.

“If I promise to fill you in on all the gossip your cold, dead heart desires the next time I see you, will you please just _ leave? _” Lena hisses, yanking the door for the final time and jutting her foot in front of it so that she can’t be stopped again.

Gayle stands far too close to her, their faces inches apart. Lips pressed together and eyes sparkling with mischief, Gayle shrugs. “I would’ve left anyway, but I’ll take that too.” 

Lena finally pushes the door open further enough to follow her out, and as they emerge out into the lobby, she blinks upon seeing Kara already looking at her, sitting in her waiting room with an open magazine in her lap and white paper bag at her feet.

Taking a deep breath, Lena gives Kara tight-lipped smile before she turns around to tell Gayle goodbye.

Gayle sucks in her bottom lip like a child still trying to reign in their laughter, and Lena rolls her eyes, nudging her elbow pointedly. “Just go, alright?” she says quietly, nodding to the elevators. “I’ll let you know about this weekend, but I probably can’t.” When Gayle opens her mouth to respond, Lena cuts her off. _ “Goodbye, _ Gayle.”

Wiggling her eyebrows, Gayle just hums and finally turns away, her smirk infuriatingly presumptuous.

“Hi Kara,” Gayle calls in a sing-song voice, waggling her fingers in a wave as she makes for the elevators, and Lena swears, she might just go on this cruise if only to push Gayle overboard herself.

Neither Lena nor Kara get the chance to answer her, because the heiress is already gone, so Lena just shakes away her aggravation briskly and treads over to Kara, the thud of her heels against the carpet harsh and stilted.

“What are you doing here?” she asks with far more bite than necessary.

Kara’s eyebrows sink together in a frown, and Lena catches how her gaze idles on where Gayle’s disappeared before she turns back to Lena. If she’s perturbed by Lena’s attitude, she doesn’t show it, just drops the magazine back on the table and stands up, scooping the paper bag in her hand.

“I brought you Big Belly Burger,” is her grand explanation, said with pursed lips and raised eyebrows like Lena should have been expecting her.

Eyeing the takeout bag, Lena blinks quickly, her mouth opening and closing uselessly before she gathers herself. “Um, alright. May I ask why?”

She half considers asking if they _ did _ make a plan for this, because Kara looks as confused as Lena feels. 

“You, uh — I mean, it’s on the list, isn’t it?”

At the mention of their agreement, Lena glances over her shoulder to where she knows her assistant is eavesdropping, and she quickly ushers Kara into her office without another word, making sure to close the door behind them. Once they’re alone again, Lena presses back against the closed door. Kara is already dawdling along the edges of her office, slowly taking in the large space and simple decor, and Lena lets out a deep breath, expelling with it an anxiety she isn’t sure how to keep at bay.

“Okay.” She pushes off from the white frame, approaching Kara once more. “What exactly are you talking about? Did we make plans for today? I don’t remember putting this on the list.”

Kara turns back around, and it’s not until now that Lena notices she’s not wearing her glasses, and Lena can’t remember ever seeing the blonde without them, not outside of her home at least. 

“Not exactly I guess, but I mean, one of the activities was to have lunch together.”

Lena crosses her arms. “So, you thought you should just show up out of the blue? In the middle of a work day?” 

Something finally seems to dawn on Kara, for her shoulders loosen up and she laughs, light and airy. “Oh, right, sorry, no. Well yes, but I mean, that was also on the list. I remember it said to be thoughtful and considerate of each others’ struggles, and I did some googling too, and a bunch of sites talked about how little surprises can go a long way. So, um, I thought I’d bring you lunch.”

Lena stares back at Kara, her balanced posture, the polite smile, the plain white t-shirt that’s tied into a knot around her hips, the faded high-rise jeans. She’s not sure at first what’s different, what catches her off guard, but maybe it’s the fact that she looks a lot like the Kara from two years ago, clean and sweetly patient. 

Blinking, Lena frowns. She hadn’t given Kara the list, it’s still in her purse somewhere probably crumpled to hell, she hasn’t so much as looked at it since she saw Kara last, and oh _ god _ what else did she find on the internet?

Lena must take too long to hesitate, because Kara’s brow knitted with concern.

“But I’m also now seeing how I messed up, uh I don’t have to stay, I’m sorry if I interrupted you,” she assures with the laid back kind of ease of someone who genuinely doesn’t want to impose, like she wouldn’t so much as bat an eye if Lena told her to go. “But I remember you always forgot to take your lunches when you were really busy, so I figured this checks off stuff on the list, but.” Kara stops, shrugs. “I can just leave this with you and go.”

Lena’s frown only deepens, and to her credit Kara just laughs. 

“It’s okay, seriously, I don’t mind.” Kara walks to Lena’s desk and sets the bag down on the edge, a careful distance from any papers or the computer. “I don’t want to rush you, I’m sure you have a lot other stuff going on. I just, I meant what I said. I’ll stay for this, as long as you need.”

For this, or for her? 

Is there a difference?

She kind of hates the idea that she’s just this helpless damsel who needs someone else to take care of her, and the wording that implies this much should make Lena cringe, but she’s still caught up on everything else to really pay it much mind.

The thing about the list is that it's not necessarily a to-do list. It’s more a list of ideas, they don’t have to go down it one-by-one because there’s a few things on there that Lena is honestly skeptical of whether or not they’re even good ideas. Namely, there’s one she only wrote down because so many psychiatrists had advised for it, but it was so unfathomable to imagine herself and Kara actually going through with it that she hadn’t considered it much.

Really, taking a retreat? Her and Kara, going somewhere out of the city, a vacation or whatever, it’s foolish, it’s a waste of time, it’s—

Dangerous.

Kara passes by her with a small, sweet smile, her hands tucked into the pockets of her loose jeans.

Gayle’s invitation resurfaces, for a moment, no matter how Lena attempts to squash it back down. Brief glimpses of an idea, of Kara on a ship deck laying in the sun, of piña coladas on the bow of a yacht, of the infinite scape of the ocean in the distance, of how they’d be confined to this one large, polluting piece of machinery that is ridiculously horrible for the environment, of how Lena would have nowhere to run until the end of the trip and they’d be forced to confront their problems, of how Gayle could easily play as a buffer if she needed.

Eleven of the thirteen couple’s therapists that Lena spoke to suggested a retreat of some sort, any kind of trip for two people to spend away from their daily lives, it provides a change of scenery to take the pressure off both parties and give the opportunity to approach the root of their issues. Something like that.

Lena thought it was bullshit. 

She spins around. “Kara — wait.”

Kara’s head lifts, and there’s none of that misguided expectancy, no flame of hope or timid anticipation. Lena doesn’t know what to make of that, what Kara’s reticent patience means, why she looks so ready to go either way and like there’s no single outcome that Kara prefers.

“You should stay,” Lena says softly. “I… Um, I mean, I know how much you can eat, and there’s no way I’ll eat everything in that bag so, yes. You should stay.”

Kara’s smile is serene, like syrup, there’s a crinkle at the corner of her eye that Lena hasn’t seen in so long. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Lena bites her lip, slowly trailing back towards her desk. 

Kara easily swings back, tucking a curl of her hair behind her ear as she comes up to the chair Gayle had just occupied. Lena stands at the corner of her desk, halfway between her own chair and the one beside Kara, and she could sit back like she was before, this shouldn’t be any different from her break with Gayle, and she shouldn’t be overthinking it so much, because this is more like a business deal than anything else.

Lena takes her own seat behind the desk.

Kara’s just asking Lena how her day’s been so far, polite and elusive like they’re just coworkers sharing a lunch hour, while opening up the paper back and fishing out a burger to hand to Lena, when her eye falls on the half-empty glass of Glenlivet that Gayle never finished.

Taking the burger, Lena tracks her eye. “Oh that’s not mine,” she hastily says, like there’s a point to making it known.

Kara doesn’t seem to care. “Okay.”

Lena’s leg bounces under her desk. “Would you like one?”

“What, one of those?” Kara laughs, splaying the bag flat on the desk for a makeshift plate for the fries. “No, thanks though. I never could get into the stuff you drink, don’t know how you did it. I really tried too, but.” Kara makes a face, a shiver passing through her shoulders. “Whiskey is _ really _ gross, I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you that.”

Lena laughs unexpectedly, watching the goofy face Kara makes as she unwraps her own burger. Kara makes herself at home so easily, she crosses her ankle over her knee and sinks a bite into the sandwich like this is any other afternoon, and strangely, it makes this all far simpler. Lena gets the distinct impression that she could probably say anything to Kara right now, could throw the food in her face and scream for her to get out or she could sit beside her and hug her like they’re old friends, and Kara would swing right along with her like they’re both completely normal, expected things of their shared lunch together.

It’s a stark contrast to the Kara she found in her apartment, but it’s not the same Kara from before, either.

Kara’s currently looking around the room again, her eyes sloping over the sleek white shelves with tastefully useless ornaments, odd abstract sculptures and modern, minimalist touches of artwork Lena herself doesn’t even recognize. It was all put up by someone Lillian sent over, a shaman Lena thinks, someone to ensure the energy in the room was balanced and that it would lull businesspersons she met with into a relaxed state of compliance. Lena never took Lillian as the spiritual type, not even religious, and at first it hadn’t really made a difference to Lena what her office was decorated with, but now she feels almost sheepish, watching Kara take it all in.

Watching Kara, Lena thinks about the cruise, about a weekend, about getting away.

Lena opens her mouth, and just when she thinks she might be calling Gayle later and asking for a plus one, just when she thinks she can get the words out, Kara turns back to her.

“Do you miss it?”

Lena blinks. “Miss what?”

Kara pops a limp fry into her mouth, nods toward the room. “Working in the labs, conducting your own research, running experiments, that stuff.”

There’s no reason for it, but Lena feels her walls vaulting back up. “What makes you think I don’t work in the labs anymore?”

“No, nothing.” Now Kara’s the one who looks sheepish, and she laughs but it’s weak, forced, her eyes dropping back to the food as she pushes the fries around. “It’s nothing, I mean, sorry, I wasn’t trying to—”

“One rule,” Lena reminds quietly, and Kara’s eye jolts back up, her placid smile frozen.

Kara’s pupils waver slightly as her gaze flits back and forth between Lena’s eyes, and Lena doesn’t know what she’s looking for. By the time Kara opens her mouth again, Lena can’t tell if she’s found it.

“I kept tabs on you,” Kara says simply.

“Really?” 

“Is that surprising?” It’s not sarcastic, Kara’s questioning lilt, her raised eyebrows, but Lena finds she’s nervous all the same.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Lena licks her lips, setting her burger down when she realizes she’s squeezing the life out of it. She words her next question carefully in her head before she asks. “What have you found?”

Kara bites her lip, slow, and then she laughs. “One rule, right?” She sloshes a fry through a smudge of ketchup but makes no move to do anything else with it. “I know how you started with LuthorCorp, a company on the verge of bankruptcy because no one wanted anything to do with it. I know you turned it into L-Corp, a completely brand new nonprofit organization that Forbes ranked in the top ten fastest-growing NGO’s of the new decade.”

She stops there, but Lena’s mesmerized if only by how this brings her no satisfaction. “What else?”

“Um… I know you’re the youngest senior executive in Metropolis, the third youngest in the country. I know you paid to have one of your brother’s old projects revived to create an AI that was originally meant to be sold to the military before he gave up on it when your father died, to continue his cancer research in 2008, and I know you made sure it was repurposed instead into a household aid device, and then you sold the design to an assisted living tech company for one dollar. I know your father called it Reality and I know you renamed it Hope.”

Lena doesn’t really want to hear more, everything about Kara’s eyes reeks of a goodbye she never got to say, and this early autumn heat feels less like a fresh start and more like the lurking of ghosts she never tried to face.

“What else?”

Even Kara seems like she doesn’t want to keep going. “I know that… well, you _ seem _ like you have a lot of friends in Metropolis.”

Lena immediately falls back to the defensive. “Seem? Are you implying I don’t?”

She doesn’t actually, they’re all paid dates, but still.

“Not at all?” Kara answers, and it’s not the same timid fumbling that is usually Kara’s trademark, which although is much more infrequent today than it was two years, it still _ exists _ — this is different from Kara’s uncertainty now, not the new, confident way she carries herself like she knows she can always handle whatever Lena throws at her. It’s nervous, and Lena never realized before now that this was never actually a trait she associated with Kara. Timid, awkward, goofy, but never nervous.

Kara goes on. “I just, I didn’t want to assume anything, not from like, whatever the magazines and Buzzfeed columns were saying about you.”

The hot retort is ready on the tip of her tongue, she’s a loaded gun prepared to point out the sick irony of a statement like that, but somehow, she manages to refrain, reels it back in. The gentle upturn of Kara’s mouth seems as if Kara knows, but maybe Lena is giving her too much credit.

Kara wipes her hands on her jeans. “You know there’s Buzzfeed quizzes about you?”

The abrupt change in the tone of the conversation, the jolt of Kara’s bashful sense of humor returning makes Lena blink rapidly, taking in the question.

And then, she snorts. “Seriously?”

Nodding, Kara smiles, reaching for a handful of fries now that they’ve steered away from the more tense of topics. “Oh yeah, totally. Based on how well I can recognize quotes from Marvel movies, I found out I’m that green dress you wore to the Golden Globes.”

Lena frowns. “What do you mean? Like you should have that dress?”

“No like, it’s a thing. Take this quiz and we’ll tell you which iconic Lena Luthor dress you are, or whatever.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense, how could someone _ be _ a dress.”

“It’s just a personality aesthetic thing, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“I don’t get it, what does that have to do with the Marvel movie franchise?”

Kara huffs, sitting up and leaning forward. “Okay, forget that one. There’s others, um… oh, I remember there was this one that’s like, put together a business outfit for Lena Luthor and it’ll say what your favorite quality is in them.”

Lena frowns. “Who’s favorite quality?”

“Yours. Like, _ your _ favorite quality in whoever is taking the quiz.”

“How would putting together a suit for me determine what I like about someone? And how would it know what I like about someone I’ve never even met?”

The exasperation quickly fades from Kara’s face, and is instead replaced with a wide, slow-spreading grin, and the sudden burst of affection that Kara regards her with as she laughs is overwhelming.

Lena blinks, and her frown only deepens. “What did you get for that one?”

Kara’s eyebrows lift in question as she cleans up the last of the fries. “What one?”

“Did you take it? The suit-building, favorite-quality quiz thing.”

The smile falters, and Kara breaks her gaze, shaking her head with a wry smile that’s beginning to look more like a grimace. 

Before Lena can question it or remind her of the one rule again, Kara’s head lolls back and she meets Lena’s eye with a tired reserve, an apathy that’s been buried under layers of deflective optimism and cheeky jokes so far.

“What?” Lena asks.

Kara’s gives her a damned smile, the only kind of smile one can have when they haven’t been atoned for their sins. 

“It said your favorite thing about me is my integrity,” Kara says flatly, the vocal fry of her normally stable voice reminding Lena of all the things she’s refused to remember. “I guess it should have been in the past tense, huh?”

Maybe memory was never reliable in the first place.

After Kara’s left, after Lena’s finished up her work at the office and after she’s trudged home just shy of midnight with a messenger bag stuffed exclusively with paperwork under her arm to do even more before she gets to bed, she finally gets around to texting Gayle.

_ Sorry, think I’ll have to pass on this weekend. Maybe next time. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay i'm done updating the chapter count. if i do it one more time, i have to take 5 shots


	18. we crack, we tear, handle with care

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am playing with fire

Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn’t.

There’s never much indication as to which way each one will go.

“Lena it’s fine, it’s not a big deal.”

Lena storms out the door, shaking off the sticky clumps from her hands and aggravatedly swiping her hair out of her face with the clean patch of her wrist. She can hear Kara running after her, but Lena continues on, shaking with humiliation and sour contempt.

This is about where it usually starts to come apart.

“Lena, c’mon, really, it’s okay!” Kara calls after her, jogging into step beside Lena as they round a corner of the hallway.

“Shut up.”

“Really, no one even cares. I promise, this kind of thing happens to everyone.”

They finally reach the elevators, and Lena jabs at the button harshly, leaving a gray smear of clay in the shape of her fingerprint.

“I said shut up.”

But Kara keeps bouncing beside her, rubbing her clean, immaculate hands together. “Seriously no one is good at this stuff on their first try.”

_ “Kara, _ ” Lena snaps finally, whirling on the blonde just as the elevator doors slide open. “For the love of god, please just shut _ up_.”

Kara’s jaw does snap shut at that, and Lena’s already stepping onto the lift, pressing for the ground floor.

The ride down is silent save for the tapping of Lena’s foot against the metal floor. Although, the next time she goes to push her hair out of her face, she forgets about the sticky mess on her hands, and she smudges a line of the gray mud across her forehead, and there’s another string of curses that Kara smartly ignores.

The numbers above the door tick down, a quick and steady journey to finally being out of this godforsaken building, a journey to getting Lena just that much closer to cleaning herself up and a change of clothes, it’s four, three, two— 

The elevator reels to a slow stop, and Lena nearly walks into the closed doors.

She waits a second, another, a few more.

The doors aren’t opening.

“Oh, no, no I am not doing this right now.” Lena presses frantically at the door-open button, and when that does nothing, she goes to the ground floor button, until she simply resorts to slapping her hand against the unmoving doors, loud and harsh enough to rattle them, but still, nothing.

“Um.” Kara clears her throat. “I think—”

“If you’re about to point out the glaringly obvious fact that we are now stuck in an elevator,” Lena hisses, only just barely containing her temper and keeping it from splattering them both against these walls. “Then I don’t want to hear it.”

Kara says nothing else, just a quiet hum under her breath, Lena can hear her rocking back and forth on her heels, the click of her tongue, the tapping of her fingers against her thighs.

Lena turns. “Can you stop that?”

She does, but Kara has a thoughtful look on her face and she points indistinctly towards the ceiling. “You know, I’ve read about this.”

“About what?”

“These elevator things.”

Lena stares at her. “Yes, this is an elevator. Congratulations, Kara, you haven’t forgotten how to read.”

Kara tuts. “I mean this, here, getting stuck in one.”

“Okay, fine.” Lena’s unsteady hands clench into fists, nails digging into her palm while she takes a sobering breath. “How do we get out of here, then?”

Kara laughs. “Oh no, I don’t mean that, I have no idea.”

“For fuck’s _ sake _ Kara, then what the hell are you reading?”

Kara is impressively well versed in Lena’s outbursts by now and the many forms they come in, even only after the few times they’ve seen each other, this being the second activity they’ve attempted since Kara brought Lena lunch. The first had been a yoga class where Kara knocked over a rather large, bubbling oil diffuser, spilling the aromatic water all over the floor and soaking three different mats belonging to the other students, and Lena all but dragged her out by the ear.

Now, Kara’s unfazed by Lena’s eruptive flare-ups, the quick and sudden segues from relaxed ease to a full blown-out fit of irritation. And then, still, Kara’s usually cool and aloof when Lena becomes cold and hard, when Lena’s voice is quiet but the razor-sharp hostility underlying the level-headed stillness is cruel. Kara seems to be working on the premise that Lena is this short with everyone, that most people will set her off with the slightest misstep. She knows when to back off, Kara usually withdraws whatever annoying line of question or aggravating, droll humor that gnaws on Lena’s nerves. She’s placating, to both Lena and herself, she wipes her face clean of any care, both pretending for Lena’s dignity that she’s not behaving like a child throwing a tantrum as well as acknowledging Lena’s feelings with a mastered patience that Lena hates.

Maybe she wants Kara to yell at her, maybe she wants Kara to call her out for being an immature brat, maybe she wants to be angry at someone that’s not a stone wall of compliance for once.

But Kara just smiles sweetly like Lena hasn’t been snapping at the world all day now. “When I was googling stuff for this, like the whole forgiveness thing, I realized there’s a lot of rom-coms about reconciliation, you know, healing and stuff.”

Lena takes deep breaths through her nose if only to keep from kicking her foot through the doors. 

“And there’s this popular trope where like — and this is usually when two people need to be forced together to talk about something they’re not talking about — they’ll get stuck in an elevator for an indefinite amount of time and somehow end up fixing things.” Kara shrugs, leaning back against the wall and tucking her hands in her pockets, ready to settle here for the long haul. “I just think it’s neat. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

Lena says nothing to that because she’s too busy still stuffing her anger into a tiny box somewhere very, very deep.

“Do you think there’s something we’re supposed to be talking about? Usually addressing that is what gets them out of the elevator. Pretty convenient if you ask me.”

Before Lena can answer, the elevator makes a horrid screech and the whole compartment jerks a step lower, just a few inches as it slots into its proper place, and then the doors are parting open with a cheerful ding.

“Well thank fucking god that’s not what we’re doing, then,” Lena grumbles, storming out the elevator.

Kara doesn’t catch up to her again until she’s nearly bursting through the studio lobby doors. Lena stops only to snatch three pumps of the complementary hand sanitizer, and Kara nearly topples into her at the sudden stop.

They’re out on the street and Lena is shaking the still-wet chunks and various patches of dried, flaking clay onto the sidewalk.

“Okay, I know you’re upset, but hear me out.”

Lena scoffs, rolling her eyes but now slowing down her hasty pace. “Kara, there’s clay in my bra, I somehow managed to break a three thousand dollar kiln I didn’t even touch along with all the pieces of everyone in the class, and the instructor is apparently the niece of one of L-Corp’s highest-paying donors. Please, enlighten me as to why I shouldn’t be upset.”

“I didn’t say you shouldn’t be upset. Okay, wait, just stop—” They’re about to cross the street when Kara grabs Lena by the elbow, not with enough force to stop her, hardly a brush of her gentle fingers, but it lurches Lena all the same and she immediately tears out of Kara’s grip. Kara’s already backing off, the playfulness gauge is draining in her eyes, and the cheery smile from before is gone. “Sorry, I’m sorry. But okay, I know, that was bad, but listen, I can either chase after you all over this city while you toss clay everywhere and scare all the pigeons, yelling about what a shitty day it’s been — which I am happy to do by the way — or we can go check out this bar near here that has a one-dollar oyster happy hour and this ridiculously tasty jalapeño infused tequila, and we can turn this whole thing around and pretend it never happened.”

Setting her jaw, Lena looks back to Kara, regards the hopeful look on her face, her open stance completely pointed towards Lena, as ready as ever to let Lena direct where they go next. 

It’s eager, it’s indifferent, it’s kind, it’s uncaring.

“One dollar oysters?” she asks flatly. “Are you asking for food poisoning?”

Kara’s nose wrinkles and she laughs. “What? No, it’s just a great deal. Metropolis really changed you, huh?”

When the irritation snuffs itself out, Lena doesn’t feel enlightened, she just feels like crying.

This isn’t where it works, it’s not one of those times.

Lena swallows thickly, flexing her core to keep the sting from shining through in her eyes. “Look, thank you, but you don’t need to… I have to…” She gestures feebly over her shoulder, only making half the effort to think of an adequate excuse before she realizes that, with Kara, she doesn’t really need one. Not anymore. “Can you please just let me go? I can’t do this right now.”

Lena doesn’t stay long enough to watch the hardening in Kara’s eyes, and she doesn’t turn around to make sure she’s not watching her go either.

xx

Lillian calls her the next day and asks why there’s a picture on TMZ of her looking like she’s walked straight out of a cement pit, just roaming the streets of National City in the middle of a weekday like she doesn’t have a very busy organization to run. She likes the true answer far less than her theory, and Lena is the one who gets hung up on.

xx

“It’s not true, you know.” 

Lena stares through the thick pane of glass in front of her at the brown-striped white fish floating behind it, how it watches Lena with these beady black eyes. It’s a spotfin lionfish, and its long, finger-like splay of fins waft up and down seamlessly, like blades of grass swaying in a light breeze. Lena’s fixated on the soulless pits of its eyes, the elegance with which its body doesn’t move save for the fluttering of its fins keeping it in perfect balance and harmony.

“Lena?”

She tears her eyes away from the tank to Kara beside her. Half her face is lit up with the blue glow from the tanks, the other mostly in shadow, and it reminds Lena of Roulette. The first few times she met Kara, she never really knew what the blonde looked like in color. In the club, everything was red and black and all the shades in between. It wasn’t until four a.m. and a diner that Lena was no longer Mary in the black and white room, it wasn’t until then that Kara became real, it wasn’t until then that Lena thought she herself became real to Kara.

Thought, being the operative word.

Lena only blinks. “What?”

It’s the first week of September, and surprisingly, their trip to the aquarium hasn’t held Kara’s attention very well. Her eyes gloss over things like they’re just unmoving pictures, she walks quickly on without Lena before she’ll realize that Lena’s still somewhere caught up at an earlier exhibit where she’s been standing for ten minutes straight. Maybe it’s about how quiet it is down here, a little after nine in the morning when they first open, just before the morning rush of families with children too young to be at school. There’s no noise from the animals or the fish on this floor, they move like the water parts for them, they’re not awkward within the space they occupy. She feels like she could spend hours here, that she could field questions from anyone about her history with Kara and her relationship with her mother without so much as batting an eye. How could she be anything but calm down here?

Kara doesn’t seem to find the same serenity. She shifts from foot to foot, she’s impatient even if she tries to hide it, she looks at the fish behind the glass with a nervous tic like she’s afraid they’re going to come pouring out in a waterfall at any moment. 

It just highlights again how different they really are, something Lena never noticed, she wonders if it was always there in front of her or if it was a strategically hidden secret.

So far, this doesn’t seem like it’s one of those times where it works.

Kara’s running her finger along the plaque beside the tank, the engraved _ pterois antennata. _ “You said a few weeks ago that I should be the one wishing I’d never met you.”

Lena watches her carefully, the slope of her blue-lit mouth, the hollow shadows painting her cheeks.

“Yes, and?”

Kara shrugs. “It’s just, it’s not true is all.”

Lena waits for her to say more, to elaborate on what brought this up or why she felt the need to say this now, but she doesn’t, and Lena is much too proud to ask.

Kara taps absently at the metal plaque, and not for the first time, Lena thinks about how out of place Kara looks here, how lost. Lena wonders if it’s the place or if it’s the time, she wonders if it’s down here in the dark that Lena sees a truer version of Kara than the blonde will ever let her see. She wonders if she’s thinking too much about it.ly 

“They’re one of the most solitary creatures on the planet,” Lena says just as Kara starts to turn away.

But she stops, and looking at Lena with open interest, she slowly comes back to the glass, again shy like it might crack if she looks for too long.

“Aren’t most fish solitary?”

“Not necessarily, depends how you mean. Most species will school together at some point in their lives, either to protect each other or just because it’s what they’re used to, even if they don’t as they get older.” Lena chuckles. “You know even piranhas will sometimes live in groups together? They don’t need to, and they’re not very open to anyone but their siblings joining, they’ll usually kill anyone that tries really.”

When she looks back to Kara, the blonde’s brow is furrowed, but she’s almost smiling and for some reason, that feels like a win.

Maybe this could be one of those times, if she tried.

“I didn’t know you were so into…” Kara scrunches her nose, and she makes a wide gesture to all the blue-lit tanks. “You know, fish.”

Lena doesn’t laugh, but she does smile faintly in response, gives a slight shrug. “It was Lex’s thing, not mine.”

There’s a lull, and something prickles under Lena’s skin, like remembering something that’s only just happened, and when she catches the small frown on Kara’s face, she wonders if she’s thinking about the same thing.

Lena bites her lip. “I just realized I…” 

Kara only looks at her, and Lena isn’t sure whether the feeling in her stomach is panic or if this is what the first step to moving on looks like. 

“I’ve never actually talked about Lex with you, have I? Not any of the specifics of my life, I was always too afraid to tell you.”

When Kara looks away, back to the fish, Lena wants to snap at her to come back, she wants to yank Kara by the chin and force her to look her in the eye when it comes to this, but the muscles of Kara’s jaw flex like _ she _ might be the one to snap if they stay here much longer.

“Not really.”

“I don’t think I ever even told you I had a brother.”

“You did, actually.”

“What? When?”

Kara’s mouth twists like she doesn’t want to be saying anything, like she wishes she were just a spectator for this scene. “It was, um, like a week after you came back from visiting him. You were working on that cure, and you went to see him because you were stuck, I guess.”

It’s coming back to her now, like skinny, wispy tendrils of a memory leaking through, and Lena frowns as if to get a firmer grasp on it. “Right, you asked if I missed him. And you…” Lena’s frown only sinks deeper. “If you already knew what he had done, why were you trying to talk me into having a relationship with him?”

“I wasn’t, I just asked why you didn’t want to get to know who he is now.”

“Is there a difference?”

Her gaze softens, but she still doesn’t look at Lena. 

“You know what I think?”

Kara closes her eyes, a soft sigh falling from her blue lips. “What?”

“I think you wanted to see if I could forgive him, because then it might mean that what you were doing wasn’t actually so unforgivable. So you wouldn’t have to feel guilty, not if you knew you had a chance that I could forgive you too.”

Kara laughs, to her surprise, a quiet rumble under her breath, and she shakes her head as she opens her eyes. “Maybe subconsciously. Honestly, who knows, it’s been so long. But… I think I was more focused on how I just wanted the assurance that you weren’t alone. That you had everyone you could in your corner, so that you’d have options for who to rely on when it was over.”

Now it’s Lena who laughs, mostly at the irony of how there’s nothing funny about how there were only ever two people in the world she fooled herself into thinking she couldn’t live without.

Because yet, look at her now.

Kara’s still staring sightlessly at the lionfish, and Lena follows. 

“They can’t help it, you know. Being alone.” Lena points along the fish’s backside. “Their dorsal fin is unfathomably poisonous, they’ll attack even others of their own kind if they come too close.”

“Why?”

“Mm, no one knows exactly. It’s suspected that they evolved this way because all they wanted was to be left to themselves, not to be bothered.”

Kara makes a quiet sound of understanding, watching as the fish slowly begins to turn away and retreat into the back of its tank. “Or maybe all that venom just forced them to get used to being alone.”

They stand side by side another minute longer, the divide between them cold and still, Kara with her arms crossed and bottom lip bunched, Lena with the unsettling uncertainty that she’s just driving them both completely in the wrong direction.

Kara doesn’t look at her. “Can we go now?”

Maybe Lena doesn’t know what this is supposed to look like when it works.

xx

“We don’t have to do this, you know.”

Lena glares up at her, hating the two inch height advantage Kara has. “Yes, we do. I’ve already seen yours.”

Kara shrugs, hands loose in the pockets of her shorts. “Yeah, for like two seconds.”

“It was thirty-four minutes.”

Kara raises her eyebrows, lips spreading into a smirk. “You timed how long you were at my place?”

Lena rolls her eyes. “I saw it on my driver’s time card. And I’ve been to your place countless times before all of this, anyway.”

“All the more reason why it’d make sense to go there first.”

“But I’ve already _ been _ there this time around.”

“Okay but—”

“Just stop, alright?” Lena inhales sharply, shaking off her foggy brain, unsure why it’s so hard to think straight when it comes to Kara. “It’s fine. I just… I needed a second. It’s fine.”

They’re standing in the narrow, unlit foyer just off Lena’s private elevator, in the dark hallway where most all of the suite is still invisible. All they can see is a slim strip of the living area, its antique white rug, the cold leg of the couch and the almost too bright window overlooking National City. Kara had followed along behind Lena leisurely, but two steps off the elevator Lena stopped abruptly, and they hasn’t moved since.

She hadn’t realized until now that Kara’s never been here, not before. Lena’s already been back in National City for three months now, and so, she forgot that this isn’t the same apartment she lived in before, the one that Kara knew and poked fun at for its unnecessary extravagance, for her ghastly rent. It’s not that she’s hesitating because she worries Kara will remark on how ridiculously pompous the suite is — because she knows Kara will have an opinion regardless — but it’s more the swift understanding that this is not a moment she will get a redo on. This is a first that does not necessarily _ have _to happen, like Kara is trying to remind her of now. This is a residence untainted with Kara, one that doesn’t have her lingering smell, one that could never spark an errant flash of a memory with Kara lounging somewhere within, one in which Kara knows where the silverware is kept, where Lena likes to go when she’s alone.

She’d never even thought all that much about it since coming back. Of course she’d noticed the distinction with her Metropolis penthouse and the first apartment in National City. She was eager for the fresh breath of air that came with a new start rid of Kara’s shadow. She had been eager for a new home that she didn’t have to tiptoe around. In the penthouse, there was no chipped mug that Lena had to shove to the back of the cabinet because it had always been Kara’s go-to, there was no gray pillow to leave on the floor because it was always Kara’s favorite to prop behind her head when they watched a movie. There was nothing that reminded her of someone she was determined to forget, and everything belonged to Lena alone. 

It doesn’t matter Metropolis never felt like a proper home, it doesn’t matter that she never expected it to anyway. 

She’s only here for four more months, give or take. Even if Kara comes further across this threshold and makes herself acquainted with this suite, even if she stains it like she does everywhere she goes, Lena will be abandoning it come January anyway. No matter what happens, this suite is not permanent, and Lena will have someone new to take over the National City division of L-Corp and she can go back to Metropolis.

So perhaps the real frustration is not to do with whether she should let Kara in, it’s about the fact that Lena is hesitating in the first place.

She knows, before it’s even begun, that this is not one of those times.

Lena kicks off her flats, trods off to the kitchen. “Just make yourself comfortable. Would you like a drink?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Kara doesn’t follow her exactly, she trails further along down the hall into the living area. Her socks don’t match, one is white and the other is a hot pink, and Lena stares at them for longer than she should while Kara simply meanders around the space, taking in the antique furniture and the relic architecture. She gets caught up on the view of the city for longer than Lena expects — this is where Kara’s lived most of her adult life, as far as Lena knows, it shouldn’t be anything new.

Lena watches her from behind the breakfast bar, Kara’s slow ambling, she notices how Kara not only does she not touch anything, but also how she never comes close enough to any of it either.

Kara catches her gaze. “It’s cute. Pretty.”

Lena pulls two wine glasses from the cupboard above. “It’s unnecessary.”

“Then why’d you pick it?”

“I didn’t.” Lena pours a thick dollop of dark, red wine into each glass. “My mother did.”

Kara slides onto one of the barstools across from her, draping her elbows over the granite counter. “Well, why’d you take it if you don’t like it?”

“I don’t dislike it.” Lena makes a flippant gesture to the excessive space as she slides a cup over to Kara. “I just wasn’t the one who picked it out.”

“Thanks.” Kara wraps her fingers around the stem of the glass, but she doesn’t raise it. “You just don’t seem to really like it, either.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just not exactly my taste.”

“Well, obviously.” Lena has no time to feel bitter over the fact that Kara thinks she knows what Lena’s tastes are, because Kara is already speaking again. “But why didn’t you go for one that actually is your style?”

“Because it wasn’t up to me.”

“But why would your mom be the one to—”

“Okay, enough.” Lena’s grip is so rock-solid around the body of her glass that she distantly worries it might shatter in her fingers, and it takes a conscious effort to set it down gently. “Look, you’re not allowed to ask me about my mother.”

Kara still doesn’t take a drink, just strokes her index finger up and down along the stem. “Why? You said we both had to be honest. That if this was gonna work, there couldn’t be any secrets.”

“I know what I said. And I’m telling you now, don’t ask me about her.”

“Okay.” 

Lena watches the way Kara’s jaw clenches, the ripple of muscle under her forearm as she twirls her glass around her hands. For just a moment, she thinks Kara will actually listen to her, that she’ll change the topic, but then—

“Yeah, I’d really rather drop it, but I feel like the fact that you don’t want to talk about it means—”

“Dear god, help me,” Lena mutters, staring down into the swirl of wine in her glass.

“—that I should probably be insisting on this one, so.” Kara shrugs, takes a delicate sip. “Why don’t you want to talk about your mom?”

“Did you pick up a spare psychology degree since I last saw you? Because it’s none of your business.”

“I’m not saying it is.” Kara tilts her head, and the way her eyes narrow should be irritating because of how sarcastic Kara’s demeanor suggests she’s being about all of this, but unexpectedly Lena just feels uncovered. “Do you talk to Sam about her?”

Of course she doesn’t, but admitting that feels like proving Kara right about something, and denying it is going against the very rule she herself has demanded. 

“I don’t talk about Lillian,” is her grand, final answer. “She’s my business partner, and she’s incredible at what she does, so I don’t see why I should have to justify my choice to hire her to anyone.”

Kara sits back, as much as she can on a backless stool, giving an indifferent sort of frown. “You don’t, I’m just curious why you don’t want to talk about her. I didn’t ask why you hired her, I just asked why you let her make decisions for you that you don’t even agree with.”

Lena swirls her wine around in her glass, watching the spidery tendrils of it splayed along the glass, but she finds herself not quite ready for the first sip yet. 

“You should know why,” Lena answers evasively, hoping that at least the looming threat of a passive aggressive retort would encourage Kara to back off, but the mindless answer just takes Kara aback, and now she worries that it was both giving Kara too much credit as well as offering an upper hand.

But Kara only laughs, confident again like Lena’s not used to. “I mean… I don’t really know a lot about her, but you always said you could never measure up to what she expected. That she’d always set some wild, impossible standard for you, and even when you actually managed to reach it, she’d still find a way to fault you for it.”

Lena petulantly turns her back on Kara, even if it’s only to lean back against the breakfast bar, unmoving. But she’d rather throw herself out the window than let Kara see the trembling of her mouth, the shaky wobble of her eyes.

“You used to say that you were convinced if there was ever one dream she had for you, it was how she never wanted you to be yourself. At least not anywhere that anyone could see.”

The glass shakes in her hands, and Lena wishes there was some exterior problem she could blame this on, that it wasn’t a consequence of her own weakness.

“And at your award ceremony, a night that’s supposed to honor the good you’ve done, I know she expected you to go up there and thank the exact same person she’s compared you to your whole life. I know that you saved more people than your brother killed, and she still found a way to make it about him. I know she treats you like you couldn’t have done any of this without her, without her guidance or her money. So, yeah, maybe I know why you don’t want to talk about that side of her but I don’t know why you’d let her talk to you the way she—”

Lena turns around abruptly, smacking her wine glass down against the counter. “You don’t know the first thing about her, you have no idea what she’s done for me, _ none _ of it would have been possible without her.”

“Yeah,” Kara laughs, not put off by Lena’s sharp eye. “But none of it would be possible without you, either. The organization has your name on the building, not hers.”

“Oh don’t be misogynistic, she’s not anything less of a Luthor just because she married into it.”

“It doesn’t matter who is or isn’t apart of your family.” Kara’s smile falls, and she now seems to be just as lost as Lena. “It’s about who redefined the Luthor name and finally gave it a purpose meant for good.”

“But I wasn’t the one to redefine it, was I?” Lena raises an eyebrow, poised and immaculate, even if everything about her plastic smile feels sloppy and unstable. “That was all you.”

“I didn’t tell the world anything except for the truth of who you really are and the good you could do.” Kara scoffs, and Lena doesn’t recognize the bitter curl of her mouth. “Maybe it was the worst mistake of my life, but I only wrote the truth.”

An unrestrained anxiety throbs in Lena’s chest, and she can’t pinpoint exactly where it stems from but Lena knows it’s nothing she wants to face.

“All I’m saying,” Lena grits out like she’s struggling to explain something to a child. “Is that you’re not allowed to ask me about my decision to hire her onto my team, because you should know better than anyone that the chance to have a mother back in your life is not passed up on lightly.”

Kara scoffs, hot and confrontational. “No, it’s not, and I already know that because I’ve done that when one of them decided to give up on the most important person in the world to me. But would I take her back in my life if I could? Yeah, of course, either one of them, but I’d hope she wants to be in mine and Alex’s lives because she loves us, not because of all the fame she thinks she can reap from our achievements.”

“I don’t care about whatever the fuck it is that motivates her to help me, all I know is that she is the _ one _ person who has never lied to me, and for that she can treat me however she likes,” Lena chokes out before she can reign it in.”

Kara only shakes her head, and Lena’s not sure what is so damn humiliating about such an anticlimactic reaction to a confession she’d hidden from just about everyone, but she knows she hates it. 

“Look,” Kara starts after she’s swallowed down a thick gulp of her wine. “The Lena I knew? She’d never put up with someone who talks to her like the way your mom does.”

What a perfect setup, too pristine to pass up.

“Then maybe you didn’t know me at all.” 

Lena scoops her glass off the counter, rounding out the exit of the kitchen towards her bedroom. She stops on the fringe of the living area, catching Kara’s watchful eye, taking note of the bitter resentment in those blue eyes before Kara can mask it over with placid indifference. 

“You know what, I’m really tired, so… maybe we should just do this another time.”

This isn’t one of those times, of that much Lena is certain.

xx

Occasionally, she wonders if Kara might not come back, and Lena wonders if she’d blame her.

For as often as Lena reminds Kara that she doesn’t need to do any of this, that she can leave whenever she likes and it doesn’t make a difference to her at all, Lena sure does walk away quite a bit. Lena is just about always the one to storm off, to leave, to call it quits for the day. Sometimes she even snaps that this was all a stupid mistake and she never should have thought that Kara could do _ anything _ to make Lena forgive her, she insists that this game they’re playing is over and that she’s never coming back.

But Lena always does, of course she does.

Sometimes Kara is the one who has had enough. Like at the aquarium, but she never truly leaves, not in the same way Lena does. She asks if they can be done now, like a small child requesting permission to be dismissed from the dinner table. She’d probably just swallow her discomfort and proceed on if Lena ever told her no, if Lena asked her to stick through it.

She’s not sure if this is what forgiveness looks like, all Lena knows is that guilt is so much darker an enemy to face than denial.

Maybe this is why she calls Kara one Friday night as she’s shutting off her laptop, the first Friday that she can leave at a somewhat reasonable hour since she started working on getting her mental health initiative off the ground. It’s likely only because the following week is her final presentation of her plan to the board, and all that’s left now is to rehearse her proposal over the weekend. She’s done all the tinkering and polishing she can by this point. If all goes well, she’ll have a month to get the program actually into its planning phase and acquire a personnel team to take over its management, so that come late October she can smoothly integrate back into her project with Spheerical Industries and resume their schedule. 

Miraculously, and this is only so far (so Lena is reluctant to jinx it), but the business side of her endeavors in National City are progressing as smoothly as she could have hoped. Even if she’s waiting for SI to catch up, L-Corp is still ahead of schedule and everything is going according to plan. So every time she needs a break from her taxing work with Kara, every time it becomes too much for Lena to handle at once, she comes back to her actual work, and perhaps it’s the success of all her hard work that softens her enough to return to Kara with a more open mind.

They don’t have plans to see each other until next week, this time to try having lunch together in a public area that’s not an upscale brunch spot so early in the morning, but tonight Lena’s finished by nine and she finds an unexpected leniency as she packs up for the weekend.

Stubbornly, she is yet to actually re-save Kara’s number to her phone, so she still dials every time.

Kara answers on the second ring. _ “Shit hi, am I late to something? What’s up? Where are you?” _

Lena still can’t get used to how Kara swears now, even if it’s not nearly as often as Lena herself and they’re usually rather harmless expletives — though if she ever hears Kara say _ fuck _ , Lena might need to take a week-long vacation away from Kara _ and _ her work.

And, no, Lena’s not thinking about the one time she actually has heard Kara say _ fuck _ because that’s different. 

“No, not at all, I’m just calling…” For what? She decides to leave that open-ended, flicks off her desk lamp. “I’m still at work, about to leave.”

_ “This late?” _

The touch of concern in Kara’s tone is bothersome, it maybe would annoy Lena if she weren’t so relaxed with her guard so low, but now she actually finds herself with a small smile. “This is actually early for me, believe it or not.”

Kara must be able to pick up on her good mood. _ “Should I have a chat with your boss about that? Not sure this up to standard with current labor laws.” _

Lena snorts. “Probably shouldn’t, heard she’s kind of a bitch.”

_ “Hey, don’t talk about her like that. Lillian seems like a lovely woman.” _

It’s been over a week since their argument about her mother, but it’s still rather bold for Kara to be bringing it up. Lena finds herself toeing her heel into the carpeted floor as she waits for the elevator, unsure how to respond. She’s not put off by the joke, but she also doesn’t quite want to get into it all over again, or give the impression that the topic of discussion is open to revisit, so she doesn’t respond.

There’s a soft sigh over the line, not impatient, more just a quiet, waiting breath. _ “So, we don’t have plans, and you’re done with work. What else you got going on?” _

“Nothing really. Was thinking of picking up a bottle of wine, but not sure if I’m in the mood.”

_ “For wine? Or just drinking in general.” _

It still catches her off guard how astute and observant Kara can be without even trying. “Second one.” 

_ “Wow. That’s a first for you.” _

“Shut up,” Lena laughs, pressing her lips firmly together to smother the wry smile. After switching her phone to her other ear, Lena presses for the ground floor. “I’m getting on the elevator by the way, I might lose you.”

_ “That’s okay.” _ Kara’s voice is soft and quiet even in the stillness around Lena, and they fall into a lull of silence broken only by the harmony of their synchronized breaths.

Lena bites her lip, wonders if she might as well just hang up now but inexplicably finding she isn’t ready for the call to end.

Nor does she think about the ulterior meaning to their words.

_ “You like smoothies? There’s a spot near L-Corp with this chai superfood shake I feel like you’d like.” _

Lena raises her eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you started eating healthy now, I’m having a hard enough time getting used to the drinking.”

Kara’s chuckle is low, warm. _ “Not in a million years. No, I just saw it last time I was there, looked like something you’d get.” _

She’s not sure where Kara’s going with this, she’s not sure what she feels about how Kara will simply just think of Lena now and again in passing, she’s not sure if she assumes Kara has always thought this way or if it’s just a recent position now that their lives are somewhat intermingled again, even if only temporary. It almost sounds as if Kara is offering to go with her, if she’s asking for them to go together.

“Would a smoothie place really be open this late?”

_ “So you admit it’s late.” _

Lena rolls her eyes.

_ “But yeah, so it’s kind of this late-hour craving place anyway, they’re only open at night, buncha dessert stuff. I just figured since you’re not feeling anything alcoholic, you could pick up one of those on your way home.” _

So that answers that. 

It’s not like she wanted Kara to ask, and Lena is far too strict about their dynamic for Kara to even think it’s an option, so, it makes sense.

The elevator opens, and Lena emerges into the dimly lit lobby. “I’ll try it sometime, thank you for the tip. But I think I’ll just go home. I should probably take advantage of being able to go to bed at a reasonable time for once.”

_ “Yeah, for sure.” _

Lena’s thankful Kara doesn’t ask why she’s calling, because she’s not sure she knows anymore.

Her neck is tingling with a subtle warmth, a slight embarrassment for this aimless call. She takes a deep breath. “Well, anyway, I—”

_ “So you’re not doing anything tonight?” _

Lena pauses, her hand on the exit door handle. “What?”

_ “Like, I mean, you’re not taking work home with you, or doing something later?” _

Lena blinks, wonders why her chest is suddenly tight, vaguely tries to remember the last time she had a check-up with her doctor.

“No?” she answers slowly. 

_ “Would you… well, um, I know we’re not that far down the list yet but uh, I know a later point says that we should try and re-immerse ourselves in each others’ lives, get to know routines again. You said it helped with empathy, or something?” _

If her chest aches, Lena doesn’t have a word to pinpoint exactly how. “Yes, it does, but the list isn’t necessarily in order. I was mainly just taking notes.”

_ “Oh, cool. Well, I mean, this might still be a bit much, so it’s fine if you don’t feel like it, and you did just say you’ll probably go to sleep anyway so actually—” _

“Kara.” Lena crosses the cement floor through the parking garage towards her waiting town car. “What is it?”

_ “A few of us are going out tonight? We’re not staying out super late because I’m working a wedding tomorrow and I have to get there early to help set up but… sorry, that doesn’t matter.” _

Kara takes a deep, long inhale, and Lena just mouths an apology to her driver as she wordlessly signals him to wait a moment.

_ “It’s just, it’s that karaoke thing we do every year, and it’s pretty laid back so… you could come, if you want.” _

Lena sits back in the leather, crossing her legs. She hasn’t really considered seeing Kara’s friends again, being around a group of people that for a naive moment she once thought were _ her _ friends. She’s not quite sure what the point of it would be, anyway, if she would wind up just regretting going out anywhere in the first place.

_ “You know, for the list,” _ Kara reminds her like she can hear Lena’s doubting thoughts. _ “I read online too that doing similar stuff to what we’d do… before… that it’ll usually help too.” _

It’s been a while since Lena’s seen this fumbling Kara, the awkward rambling one, save for that night at her apartment when Lena had simply stared at her in silence for minutes on end. Lena doesn’t know what it means, she’s getting rather tired of trying to make sense of the many personalities that are slowly becoming unearthed in the Kara today. Lena never thought Kara was a simple, one-dimensional person, no, but she was never this uncertain about who Kara is, if Lena is seeing someone Kara is just trying to be or if it’s a glimpse of who she really is, a version Lena never had the chance to meet.

“Do they know?” Lena asks quietly. Her driver is always discreet and indifferent to her conversations, he hears nothing, but Lena is almost afraid of hearing herself.

_ “Know what? About… you?” _

Lena can’t help but wonder if Kara had been about to say _ us _.

“Yes.”

_ “Uh, kind of. I wasn’t sure how much you’d appreciate anyone knowing, so I really only mentioned that we’ve been talking again, but that’s it.” _

She’s not sure if it’s worse or better that they’re thus assuming this is because her and Kara are on good terms, like they’re rebuilding something rather than preparing for its end.

But she supposes it was a good instinct. It feels far too personal for them to know how Lena’s asked Kara for help, how she hasn’t moved on already.

_ “Alex knows, though.” _

Lena’s stomach drops. 

“How much?”

She doesn’t dislike the other sister, not actively, but she knows that she doesn’t trust her. She’s not even sure why, what exactly it is that she doesn’t trust Alex with, because she certainly would do anything for Kara, and she seemed kind enough to Sam. 

Maybe it’s herself. Maybe Lena just doesn’t trust Alex to not make Lena doubt everything she thinks she knows.

_ “Like, kind of everything. I’m sorry, I uh… I just needed someone to talk to about it.” _

The smooth, fluid show of honesty catches her off guard. 

Lena’s a little ashamed to realize that she hadn’t given this much thought, if Kara would even have things to get off her chest about their arrangement, things she doesn’t want to talk about with Lena. Just because Lena has been a little sparse on the details with Sam doesn’t mean that Kara operates the same way. And she knows that if she were to ask Kara what she and her sister spoke about, Kara would tell her without question. Like Lena already told Sam, she’s at the very least confident that Kara felt _ something _ for Lena, that there were authentic feelings _ somewhere _ in the mix. Kara isn’t a heartless void of nothing, she of course feels guilt for hurting someone else. It’s part of why this is so important, it’s not just for Lena but for Kara as well, because it’s so irresponsible for Kara to have placed the stability of her happiness on her past mistakes, especially to someone she knew she would lose. 

They both need to get over the past. This much, Lena knows.

_ “Lena?” _

God, she’s always hated karaoke.

“Where should I meet you?”

xx

This is a completely, utterly, and ridiculously stupid idea.

Nia crushes her into a hug immediately. “Lena! My god, it’s been so _ long. _”

Winn hugs her from the opposite side. “Oh, we have so much to catch up on.” He angles his head back slightly to catch her eye. “You know, I’m not even mad your AI isn’t being sold to the public, because it was literally one of the coolest devices I’ve read about in years.”

Kara is quick to usher them both off of her, and Lena just stiffly stands still until they’ve stepped back and away. She can’t quite remember what Kara told her about which of her friends knew the truth, the truth from before, but she can’t imagine Winn and Nia knew about how Kara kept the article a secret for so long, or they wouldn’t be so… _ insensitive, _ though that word is perhaps too antagonistic. It makes her curious as to what Kara did tell them when she left, what their understanding is for Lena to abruptly disappear without saying goodbye.

“I technically didn’t make the design for Hope, I just owned the rights,” Lena explains tentatively, straightening out her white blouse, trying to not come off as uncomfortable as she feels. “I hired a tech engineering group to do most of the legwork, and I pitched them my general vision for it.”

The pointed look that Kara gives Winn suggests that Kara herself knew this, like this has been a conversation they’ve had multiple times.

“Either way.” Winn gives her a boyish grin, leaning his arm against Nia’s shoulder. “That thing was freaking cool, its language recognition algorithm is supposed to be one of the most advanced in the field. Is it true it uses an IPA-based transcription system so it can be compatible with all the world’s languages or—”

“Winn.” Kara looks almost annoyed now, and it’s actually a little amusing. “She’s not here to talk about work.”

Kara’s right, she doesn’t want to talk about anything business because of how closely it reminds her of how things used to be, but Winn’s crestfallen eyes do make her feel a little guilty (as she’s apparently prone to do these days), so while Kara shrugs off her loose cardigan and has her attention diverted, Lena leans in to Winn’s ear. 

“I’m not really sure about the specifics, but I know it was a DNI linguist from Fort Meade who did most the designs for that aspect. I can get you his contact, if you’d like.”

Winn’s pout immediately dissipates into the same crooked grin, and he subtly holds his fist out. “Missed you, dude.”

So far, it’s only Nia and Winn at the bar. It’s a spacious place, with a generous number of low, square cocktail tables spread throughout and a line of three billiards tables pressed against the far back side, with a dart board just a little further beyond that. The bar itself is small, not a very long counter, painted a firehouse red but faded and chipping from age and grime. The whole place seems like it’s meant to be an underground secret with its metal fences and warehouse architecture, along with the fact that it’s a Friday night and barely at three-quarters capacity, but it couldn’t be any more different from Roulette’s highbrow minimalism, the ornate club for the most expensive elite. This is, Lena is fairly certain, a dive bar, even if it’s been a while since she stepped foot in one.

For now, Winn leads them to a table deeper inside, animatedly explaining where everyone else is, as well as catching Lena up on two years of missed narrative by somehow cramming it into a two minute monologue. With Alex’s reference, Winn informs her that he too also started working for the Spheerical Industries on their cybersecurity team, and he’s been there for a year now. Lena’s surprised she hasn’t run into him sooner, but before she can ask he quickly moves on to how James had gotten into freelance photography in his spare time over the last few years, and after some working up some ladders, he finally landed a job with CatCo at the end of last year. If Winn notices how Lena’s hands clench at her sides, how her focus wavers when he mentions the media company, he doesn’t comment. Lucy only just left Roulette fairly recently, she spent most of last year interning part-time at a government relations firm and was offered a position as a legislative aide only two months ago. Kelly had always been working part-time at a counseling office while she worked at Roulette, but sometime before Lena left National City, Kelly had worked up practicing full-time in psychiatry. Brainy and Nia both graduated from NCU the year that Lena left, and Brainy had quickly landed a job at Lord Technologies as a solutions architect, focused mainly on their IT infrastructure, whereas Nia has been writing columns for the civics department of a small, local publication that Lena’s never heard of. Nia, who’s sitting beside Kara, goes on a tangent about the latest story she researched on a local climate change activist who led the campaign that convinced the city mayor to ban any non-compostable takeaway containers from restaurants. 

It’s as Winn excitedly runs through his crash-course that Lena realizes how little she knew about Kara’s friends before, aside from her obvious shared interest in technology and science with Brainy and Winn. Lena never knew what their hobbies were, she didn't even know that half of them had jobs outside of Roulette all along. She’s not caught up on how Kara never told her that James has a bachelors in photography or that Lucy’s always been interested in politics, how Nia has the same drive for civic journalism that Kara used to, no that’s not what itches in her throat. It’s more the blunt fact that Lena realizes she simply never asked, having been too caught up in her own secrets.

“Winn,” Kara groans across from them, elbows propped on the table and burying her face in her hands. “How many Red Bulls have you had today?”

“Only three, so shush, I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet.” Winn waves her off, leaning onto the backrest of Lena’s chair.

It’s hit her over and under the head plenty of times by now, Lena’s realized that there’s a factory load of shit she can’t be sure of anymore — especially when it comes to Kara. She’s painfully aware that this process of working through their issues seems to be about finding out all the things she never understood in the first place as much as it is about moving on.

So she’s not really surprised by the fact that she can’t figure out why her stomach twists uncomfortably when Winn had been quick to take the chair beside her first, and because she’s in the corner with nothing on her other side, this had left Kara to sit opposite them. Lena would never go so far as to say that she’s comfortable with Kara, that she feels like she can relax around the blonde — because _ that _ level of progress is so out and beyond her reach that she’s not sure she’ll ever actually get there — but it’s only natural that she’d feel less overwhelmed sitting next to Kara.

But, whatever. Yes, the whole point of the plan is about forgiving Kara so Lena can move on with her life, but a certain benefit from reconnecting with Kara’s friends, like the many psychologists had in fact suggested, is that it’s sort of a test run. Baby steps, in a way. If she can forgive them for the smaller, less damning betrayals, then surely it takes her on the path towards such a thing with Kara. 

No, Lena’s not really sure what Winn knew, and yes his excessive chatter is difficult to focus on and makes Lena’s palms a bit sweaty, but she finds no… resentment, towards him. If anything, she has to admit that she missed his nerdy demeanor a little bit, too.

“Right.” Kara’s hand smacks against the table, blowing her cheeks out exasperatedly when it becomes clear Winn shows no sign of stopping. “I’ll go get us drinks, then.” 

Both Winn and Nia ignore her as she leaves.

“Are you gonna tell her about Alex?” Nia asks excitedly.

“Yeah, duh.”

Lena pretends her stomach isn’t all the way up in her throat, she forces a smile. “What about Alex?”

“Well, I am so glad you asked,” Winn drawls theatrically, sparking a momentary genuine smile from Lena. “You were around when she got that lab technician job at SI, right? Maybe? Anyway, she was doing that for like, a year and a half I think, but towards the beginning of this summer her supervisor was looking to get her in for a promotion to a research program manager, right?” 

Lena goes to voice her understanding, but Winn plows on too quickly. 

“The only problem is that California’s got some new, strict regulations about who can run their own research projects, specifically when it comes to actually getting the bio-med tech implemented into the company’s practice, because SI works in both research and production. Most places used to say you only need a bachelors, but after all that stuff that went down with your brother—” 

Nia cuts Winn a sharp, wide-eyed glare and Lena stiffens, but Winn continues to be oblivious.

“—Congress came down hard on FDA regulations, and the ASCLS came down hard on the education requirements, and now California’s one of the first states to actually be implementing the new licensure laws, _ so _now you need a doctorate. Dead end for her, right? She played the whole thing off, said it was fine, she was happy with her position.”

“Okay, this is the best part,” Nia whispers conspiratorially to Lena.

“Zip it, this is my moment.” Winn huffs, shaking his head and mouthing words to himself as if to catch himself back up. “Right, right, okay, but so her boss talked to his boss who talked to _ their _ boss, and at some point it got up to Dr. Arias. Oh, you’re the one that introduced her to us! Right, yeah, okay, so I’m still not really sure what she even does except that she’s like, really high up there, and I guess she talked to somebody else, and—”

“Winn, you’re really making this more complicated than it needs to be.”

“I’m _ getting _ there.” Winn pointedly angles himself more directly towards Lena so he can no longer see Nia. “Bottom line is this: SI’s got this scholarship program they started a few years ago, and it’s really only ever been for STEM undergrads, but so I think your friend just talked to the CEO, Dr. Spheer, yeah you know him too, and essentially, they decided to help Alex go back to school part-time to get her doctorate.” 

Holding up a finger to pause, Winn quickly stretches across the table to grab Nia’s phone.

“No, Winn, don’t—” 

He drops it back down onto the table with a _ thud. _ “Boom, mic drop.”

_ “Give _ me that.” Nia snatches her phone back irritably. 

Lena’s mind scrambles to catch up with the multiple winds and turns of Winn’s retelling, and she blinks quickly, sitting forward. “But I thought part-time PhDs weren’t typically possible for the hard sciences, there’s too many lab hours required, it would take far too long.”

“Okay see, and _ that’s _ the actual best part.” Winn snaps a finger excitedly in her face. “Apparently her supervisor works as an adjunct at NCU’s graduate school, he usually only would teach like one class every other semester and he split up his research between the school and SI. They had to make a special request to the administration, but basically if she selects him as her faculty advisor, then her work in SI’s labs can be put towards her hours requirement.”

“I… wow.” Lena sits back, stunned. She doesn’t even know where to begin with untangling her thoughts. Sam went to Jack to help Alex go back to school? Without telling Lena? Is that… Lena can’t even articulate to herself if that’s a _ bad _ thing, if she can actually fault Sam for that. Lena is steadily learning there is a fair amount of shit that’s not any of her business, things she is nowhere near educated enough about to be meddling in. It should make her feel better, realizing she’s okay with Sam not telling her about this because of how Lena knows she probably would have done the same thing, but she finds it just leaves her cold, slick, on edge. 

She shakes her head. “That’s… that’s amazing, good for—”

Kara sets a round tray of drinks unceremoniously on the table, the pints of beer sloshing over the edges and foaming around the rim of the plastic tray. “Sorry that took so long, got to talking with Mike. What’d I miss?”

“Just telling Lena what a badass your sister is,” Winn explains with a smug smile, like he considers his friend’s success a personal achievement.

Kara’s mid-handing out a beer to Nia, and her hand pauses in the air, so brief Lena almost doesn’t notice if it weren’t for how Kara’s eyes flit to hers, and Lena wonders if Kara knows her discomfort. It should be sweet, it should make her feel better to be understood, but it just makes the knots of rumbling tension in her stomach throb.

While everyone else has their beer, Kara hands her a lowball glass with a high pour of an amber liquor, and Lena takes it mindlessly. She wants to down it at once, eager for the liquid relief to help her relax, but she finds she can’t, she’s nauseous just at the thought of it simmering in her stomach, and it only makes her queasier to fixate on this frustration. It’s not until everyone else is halfway through their own beverages that she realizes Kara had just automatically remembered Lena hates beer, knew her preferred drink instead.

Okay, yes, she has the simplest go-to drink order there is, but still, she notices.

Everyone else shows up in small waves. James and Brainy arrive together after having run into each other outside, and Lucy comes shortly after with Kelly in tow and an announcement that she accidentally sent her mentor a private email meant for Kara, which was requesting something along the lines of _ limoncello body shots or pickleback shots?, _ and due to the heightened enlightenment of “no longer giving a fuck about anything” she has elected to buy everyone a round of tequila shots.

Kelly, laughing beside her, only asks, “Why wouldn’t you send that over text?”

Lucy shrugs, sliding onto the seat beside Kara. “Thought it’d have a bigger impact over gmail. Who’s got the limes?”

Everyone is equally enthusiastic to see Lena, though more collected than Nia and Winn, and she wonders if Kara had given them a warning notice that she’d be joining them tonight. She can’t decide whether it makes it all so much easier that they treat her the same as they did before, that no one acknowledges the elephant in the room — or at least, what feels like one — because certainly the alternative tip-toeing tension would be worse. Wouldn’t it?

At ten, Winn and James claim the first round of karaoke once the barkeep’s announced the beginning of the event, and Winn is quick to scramble out of the seat beside her. The stage is somewhere off behind Lena by the dartboard, and so she has to turn in her seat to watch as the two men flick through a screen of song options. 

Every nerve ending in her body might be clanging in alarm for no reason other than the inability to pinpoint where her anxiety stems, but she does know it has nothing to do with Kara’s friends and, almost unfortunately, she still likes them.

She’s not even sure if there’s anything left to forgive.

Kara slips into the now-free chair beside her with a sheepish smile, a pint glass dangling from her wiry fingers. Her cheeks are rosy from the tequila shot, and it’s actually a little cute how she licks the spare grains of salt from the corner of her mouth. Lena had passed on the round of shots Lucy offered, and her scotch remains untouched on the table.

“Hey.” Kara’s knee nudges against Lena’s, but she’s not sure if it’s an accident or not.

Lena swallows. “Hi.” 

Kara nods toward the drink. “Did you not like it? I’m sorry, they’re not really known here for any of the fancy stuff you usually have.”

“Oh god no, it’s not that, that’s fine.” Lena shakes her head, still struggling with the bleary cloud of her foggy mind. Even when sober, inexplicably, she struggles to think clearly, like she’s a computer with a lag in its processing, and it just makes her chest pang harder. “No, the drink’s fine. I’m sorry, I just… am not really feeling up for drinking right now.”

“Oh.” Kara’s eyebrows knit together. “Shit, you did say that over the phone. Are you sure you want to be here? You really don’t have to stay if you’re not in the mood, it’s totally okay, I can come up with an excuse for you or something.”

Lena has spent most of this last month with Kara wishing she understood this woman as well as she did the one from before, she grapples at any hint of it, because how is she supposed to forgive someone that no longer exists? And yet it’s still a sharp kick to the gut every time she’s faced with a version of Kara that actually _ is _ familiar. This nurturing, patient Kara ready to accommodate whatever Lena needs, it should be everything, it should make this whole endeavor worth it, it should be all the closure Lena needs to forgive her.

So why isn’t it?

“No, it’s fine, I promise.” Lena smiles, but the patronizing way Kara tilts her head suggests she sees right through it, and Lena laughs, albeit weakly. “Really, I’m just…”

“What?”

Lena swallows, takes a sharp, shallow breath. Honestly, doing this with Kara, while it has nothing to do with how seriously the blonde takes her, Lena still feels like a young teenager trying to learn the ropes to some mundane, adult process that should be coming much easier than it is.

Lena looks down at Kara’s hands, flat and unmoving in her lap. “I just… I feel like we’re moving in circles.”

Winn and James have started their duet, a creaky rendition of _ All That Jazz _, and Lena moves to turn back towards it, ready to drop this conversation out of politeness to pay them her attention, but Kara just taps her foot against the leg of Lena’s chair, pulling her focus back.

“What do you mean?” Kara asks, leaning in closer to be heard.

Her head is light, her stomach is churning, and her chest hurts somewhere far deeper than her heart.

Her voice cracks. “Why did you quit CatCo?”

Kara blinks, her mouth parting open fruitlessly. She coughs, laughs. “What?”

“All your friends, everyone, they’ve all moved on to other things, they’re all chasing their dreams and Alex is going back to school.” Lena hates the burn behind her eyes, she hates the sand in her mouth. “You were the first one out. Why did you go back?”

The placating patience ebbs away, Kara’s eyes harden, and if Lena weren’t so overly analytical of every microexpression that flies over Kara’s face, she might not notice how stiff she becomes.

“I left Roulette.” Kara tears her gaze away. “Got fired, whatever. But I didn’t go back.”

“But you’re still bartending.”

“And what’s so wrong with that?” Kara hisses suddenly, her hair whipping to the side with how sharply she turns on Lena again.

The spark, the impending moment, Lena sees it in Kara’s steely eyes, even if it’s only just a reflection for something to come much later.

The grit vanishes as quickly as it came, Kara lets it go of it like it was never there, and Lena wants to scramble for it back, wants to dig her nails in and beg for it to stay because at least anger is something Lena understands. She knows how to face it far more than any of this unspoken tension, any of the questions they’re both too afraid to ask now that truth is finally guaranteed_ . _

But before she can say anything, Alex has arrived and is approaching the table, hands hung loosely in the pockets of a cognac leather jacket. She greets the whole group, friendly and jovial but still precisely firm, the same Alex that Lena remembers.

Alex’s eyes catch on Lena, they still and narrow like frost. It reminds Lena of the look on Alex’s face when Lena had walked in on her and Sam talking, all that long ago, and it’s not until now that Lena realizes she has no idea what Sam told her. Lena didn’t want to know about anything where the Danvers sisters were concerned, and for all she knows Sam could have made it abundantly clear that their relationship was going nowhere because of Lena’s own fears. Or worse, she led Alex to believe that anything between them was over because Sam herself claimed to not want it. She wonders if Sam told Alex about her scholarship or if Alex heard about it from someone else, had to take another’s word that Sam was ever involved at all.

Lena thought she understood everything, and it’s absolutely crippling to realize she knew nothing.

Alex nods at her but otherwise doesn’t give her any more of a personal greeting. She looks to the group. “I’m gonna go get a coke, anyone need a refill?”

Kara’s rubbing her forehead tensely, still brushing off the almost-something moment with Lena. She lifts her head. “Yeah, can you make it two?”

On Kara’s other side, Nia yelps in objection. “Oh come on, you can do better than two drinks, don’t quit on me now.”

Lena has no time to address the fact that not only does Kara drink now, but she apparently doesn’t do so lightly.

“Nah, it’s for Lena, don’t worry. I’ve got plenty more planned for tonight.” Kara laughs, clinking her near-empty beer with Nia’s.

“I thought you work tomorrow,” Lena points out before she can consider why she’s being such a brat now.

When Kara looks at her, it’s not the same upset as before, the wire of animosity that Lena had only gotten a glimpse of. Kara just looks tired and confused.

But before Kara can answer her, Alex is beckoning her sister over, nodding towards the bar with her tongue prodded against the inside of her cheek. “You need a refill too, anyway. Come on.”

Kara is eager for the reprieve, and Lena has given up on understanding why this bothers her.

She catches Kara looking at her more than once while she stands with Alex at the bar, and the older sister’s expression is stern, calculated. It doesn’t take a genius to work out they must be talking at her, and Lena refuses to hide how blatantly she watches them.

The rest of the night goes on without much other preamble. Kara brings Lena back a diet soda, and Lena sips on that for the rest of the night, her scotch gathering a fine layer of dust on its surface as the hour passes on. Brainy stands up, all but ready to sing a song with Nia, but she hastily pushes him back down into his seat and scampers off to the stage to sing some Kelly Clarkson song by herself, which leaves most the whole table cackling with glee. Lucy and Kelly do some poorly coordinated version of _ Hollaback Girl _ that has to get cut off early because Lucy is laughing so hard at how Kelly fumbles over the lyrics and begins to make up her own with a horribly misplaced confidence, and they’re both playfully booed off the stage. 

The ice melts in Lena soda, and Lena finds herself chewing on her straw more often than she actually drinks it, not wanting her distraction to come to an end, leaving her with just a watered down, lukewarm coke, while Kara’s steady refills keep coming, never losing their chill before she downs them quickly.

Lena’s still tense, still unsure what she’s doing with this sweet group, pretending she belongs anywhere near them. The longer she stays, the less it feels like she’s there for herself, and the clearer it becomes that Kara would be having a far better time if Lena weren’t there at all. Kara’s quiet, even her brightest grins feel muted, her loudest laughs are smothered. 

Maybe that’s just the way Kara is now. She’s a much paler version of who she used to be from as far as Lena can tell, but she hadn’t anticipated that Kara would still be this way around her friends, and Lena has a feeling it’s less to do with Kara and more to do with the fact that Lena is watching her.

Lena can’t really keep up with all the guilt she shoulders, it’s slippery between her fingers, sticky in her dry mouth.

Kara doesn’t seem all in the mood for a song either, because once everyone else has gone and the group turns to her, she tries waving them off. But they badger her, poking and prodding, and even though she keeps shoving off their taunts, Alex eventually makes her come around. It’s less of persuasion and more just that the older sister loops around the table and tugs Kara to her feet, practically dragging her to the stage while the rest of the table erupts in enthusiastic, anticipating applause. 

“Oh, the Danvers Duets are always the best,” Nia tells Lena before she puts her fingers in her mouth, delivering a sharp-pitched whistle.

Despite her grimace from the loud noise, Lena laughs. “Really? Are they any good?”

“Are you kidding?” Lucy is the one to turn to her now, her elbow propped on James’ shoulder with a tequila and ginger ale in hand. “They’re fucking unreal. Alex is totally solid, definitely someone that should have done like, acapella back in college, but Kara?” Lucy puffs out her cheeks comically, blows out a breath. “That woman should’ve made a career out of it, she’s the best singer out of all of us.”

“Is that saying much, really?” Lena says sarcastically before she can think much of it, and when Lucy flicks her lime wedge at Lena in mock outrage, she forgets, for just a moment. She forgets these aren’t her friends, she forgets she doesn’t belong here, she forgets how this is all temporary.

There’s not even a single note of the tell-tale, electric beat of the song opening before Kara and Alex are already into the song, and the table has their loudest reaction yet when the first lyrics for _ All Star _ work fluidly between the two sisters onstage. The sing in a perfect rhythm, alternating at the best transitions and weaving into a silky rhythm when they come back together. For the first time tonight, Lena finally sees that beaming smile on Kara’s face, that infectious head-thrown-back laugh that leaves just about everyone else in the room with a grin on their face. 

It makes the crushing guilt come rushing back in like a douse of cold water, it seeps under her skin, it makes Lena forget everything she convinced herself this was all for.

The song ends, and a few stray beads of sweat trickle down Kara’s temple as she stroll back to their table beside Alex, her grin relaxing. It twitches, that smile, when her eyes land back on Lena, and once more, Lena is reminded of how she shouldn’t be here, not at all, she can’t understand why Kara’s invited her, Lena feels unbearably nauseous with her own misplaced belonging.

Kara catches her staring, she curls her hair behind her ear self consciously and gives Lena a quizzical look as she retakes her seat.

“Everything okay?” 

Lena is just about to tell her that she’s going to head home when a pair of arms are suddenly around her shoulders and hoisting her to her feet.

“Everything is _ fabulous _,” Nia coos in Lena’s ear cheerfully. “Lena's on next, already signed you up on the slot so.” The younger woman pats her shoulder. “Off you go.”

“Oh, fuck no.” Lena shakes her head furiously, her heart pounding. “Sorry, but I don’t sing.”

“Yeah, neither do most of us,” Winn laughs.

Alex flicks him on the ear. “Please, you could be on Broadway if you wanted.”

“Not the point.” Winn wags a finger in her face, but Alex glares him down and he withdraws, shaking her off before holding his beer up instead. “Anyway, to Lena! Get up there, dude.”

Lena keeps her feet firmly planted. “No, truly, it’ll be far more pleasant for everyone if I just keep watching.”

She’s seen how this goes, she watched the same thing with Kara, she knows all the silly mind-games they play, all the teasing they’ll do to get her up on that stage but she refuses to cave, because as it’s been made _ abundantly _ clear, Lena is not made for anything resemblant of the divine friendships she intrudes on now.

Because Lena knows, she does. 

She’s not the friend they deserve, she made Sam feel like she had to keep her wonderfully open heart hidden to keep her, she’s making this far harder for both her and Kara than it needs to be. 

Lena only takes up space with all the hurt she doesn’t know where to set down.

“You should do it,” Kara says softly, with an adoration that should be too quiet for Lena to hear but penetrates through the noise all the same. The blonde drums her fingers against her glass. “You have a really nice voice, actually.”

Lena turns, swallowing. “You’ve never heard me sing.”

Kara laughs, dry, subtle, and it’s not until now that Lena recognizes one of the key distinctions between the Kara of today and the Kara of before is that this one in front of her seems much far older than just two years.

“You used to sing in the shower,” Kara reminds her dryly, leaning back in her seat, back to being reserved and muted. “Sorry, walls at the Danvers residence are pretty thin.”

Lena’s never been religious, but oh does she wish she had someone to pray to, if only to ask why it still hurts like this.

Everyone laughs, but all Lena sees is Kara.

This doesn’t feel like one of those times where it works, and she’s tired of pretending it ever could.

Was this a mistake? Is her choice to come back into Kara’s life so that she could move on so completely a disaster, was she foolish all along to thing that this would work? Is this taking her only in the wrong direction, is she taking herself only further from the serenity she craves? 

Because when she saw Kara again behind that bar in the orchestra hall, Lena was fine, she was okay. Kara still haunted her whenever she saw a CatCo reporter, Lena was still terrified of moving back to National City, Lena tore apart the people closest to her because of how incapable she was of dealing with her own broken heart, but at least it didn’t _ ache _ anymore. She was passed that. Maybe it was just numbed, maybe it was just a matter of pretending it wasn’t there, but Lena would so much rather continuing on like that than to face whatever this is now.

Or is it just that she must face all the hurt and the pain before she can finally heal? That it must get worse before it gets better, is that true? Or is she simply back up an old, rotting carcass that should have just been left out in the cold?

Nia’s pushing her shoulder, Winn is kicking his feet up on Lena’s chair so that she can’t sit back down, Kelly is calling words of encouragement for her, and, well.

It looks an awful lot like Lena has to pick a song.

There’s no stage light, it’s nothing like Lasker ceremony, it’s hardly even a _ stage _. There’s just a makeshift stool from a plastic crate to step onto an unsteady platform less than a foot off the ground, a Walmart karaoke machine plugged into a clunky TV from the early 2000’s, a thick plastic remote to flick through a channel of music selections.

Her head is still stuck somewhere back at the table, still hung up over the graying distance of Kara’s eyes, the lazy way she slumps back in her chair, the wet parting of her mouth around the lip of her glass. If she were more focused on what she’s doing now, if she were paying attention to her mechanical movements of working into a public display like this is any other mindless press conference, she’d recognize the anticipating embarrassment. Lena would see that this is stupid, that she’s too old for this, she’s too much of a public _ figure _ for this, that she’s going to regret this later.

But.

Those ashen eyes, that limp smile, an unconditional devotion left as only an afterthought of care.

Lena doesn’t recognize most of the songs on the list. She flips through them quickly, ready to get this over with. The sooner she mumbles whatever song she picks into this cheap microphone, the sooner she can look Kara in the eye and tell her that coming to this night was a mistake, the sooner she can apologize for ruining and intruding on her and her friends’ annual karaoke night, imposing on a group of people that’s only ever welcomed her.

It’s bitter against the inside of her cheek, this trembling vulnerability. But it’s not until she picks the first song she recognizes from the list, the first song she thinks that a group of people who appreciate a good throwback will enjoy, it’s not until the first notes of the delicate instrumentals flow through the bar and she watches everyone in the bar relax back into their seats as they all prepare for the slower ballad most everyone loves and recognizes, it’s not until Lena catches the flash of recognition in Kara’s face even from across the room, that she realizes.

Lena is the executive director of a nationally famous, up-and-comping nonprofit organization, she’s the sister of a very publicly despised egomaniac, the daughter of a multi-billion dollar family that is as famous for its groundbreaking scientific contributions as it is for its perpetual hoarding of wealth, she is the ex-girlfriend of a B-list actress on the same tier of fame as Daisy Ridley because of a lucky shot at a random vampire-movie franchise, and Lena was on the cover of just about every major media publication the first month of the new decade.

She is intimately familiar with attention on her.

But standing on the low, rickety fake-stage of this dive bar with the lyrics to _ Landslide _ queuing up on the screen in front of her, Lena has never felt more exposed.

Maybe it’s for what the song stands for, maybe it’s for how she wishes it were true, maybe it’s for how it isn’t at all.

So, yes. This was a completely, utterly, and ridiculously stupid idea.

The first lyrics are up on the screen before she has to sing them, before they become highlighted, _ I took my love and I took it down, _ and she has half a mind to just drop the mic and flee out the bar without another word to anyone inside.

But perhaps it would be more mortifying for them all to see that she can’t even sing this silly song than it would be to just _ do _ it, and she can pretend like it means nothing to her, like she’s not this fragile echo of someone she wishes she could be, someone stronger.

So, fine. She sings it. 

She doesn’t look at Kara, she doesn’t look at anyone, her blood pounds through her ears the harder she tries to keep the quaking from her voice, because this should be just a rehearsed speech like any other. Lena refuses for this to be the moment she takes her stance on a stage and tell Kara everything she is so afraid of.

But it’s just that — _ well I’ve been afraid of changing. _

And she can pretend all she wants, but — _ ‘cause I’ve built my life around you. _

She has always known that — _ but time makes you bolder. _

Lena knows this is how it’s supposed to — _ even children get older. _

It was always her aspiration, but maybe she isn’t quite — _ and I’m getting older, too. _

There’s something intangibly stifling about finishing a song she never intended to begin, like standing in line for a movie she didn’t want to see anyway. 

The only thing more embarrassing than anyone noticing the crack of her voice is the fact that she cares at all, that a song from the 70’s in a dive bar hits somewhere far too intimate in her chest.

She’s not sure they pay any ulterior meanings much mind, anyway. There’s a polite round of applause, not too much and not too little. It’s not a groundbreaking ballad that brings anyone to tears, it’s not beautifully moving or heavenly insightful of anything other than how Lena’s not as good at compartmentalizing as she thought.

She’s just a girl in a bar with a sandpaper heart, singing a song no one seems to hear.

“Not bad, Luthor,” Lucy compliments with an easy, impressed grin, and everyone else nods along as Lena approaches the table. “Not bad at all. You should sing something with Kara next time.”

Lena stays standing at the edge of the table, pointedly avoiding Kara’s heavy gaze. The other friends immediately voice their agreement, Nia and Winn are discussing how Lena’s delicate register would be such a nice compliment to Kara’s powerful and warm timbre, Kelly is asking Lucy what genre of music they’d be best suited for, and Alex is looking at Lena as the one person who understands the truth here.

There won’t be a next time.

“I have to use the bathroom,” Lena announces abruptly, not bothering to take her purse before she turns back around.

She’s dizzy, her vision has never been more focused, she’s sweating, she’s far colder than she’s ever been, Lena bursts into the privacy of the graffitied bathroom like coming up for fresh air.

Lena keels over the sink, bracing her hands against the porcelain and sucking lungfuls of air faster than she can breathe them back out, her mouth trembling with each.

What is she so afraid of?

The door creaks open behind her, and Lena straightens immediately, centering back the placid composure of a level-headed businesswoman faster than a face can peak into view in the mirror.

It’s Kara, of course.

“Are you… okay?” Kara hesitates like she already knows the answer, like she knows Lena hates how she asks at all.

Lena inhales sharply through her nose, brushing her hair from her face and pretending to fix her makeup. “Yes, fine. Are you?”

Kara sighs, letting the door shut quietly behind her. She stuffs her hands in her pockets, dawdling, not quite awkward but just tired, patient.

“That was a nice song,” the blonde tries.

“Thank you. Yours was too.”

Lena watches Kara from her peripheral, how she scratches the bridge of her nose, how she leans against the paper-towel dispenser behind her, how she watches Lena’s backside rather than her face in their reflection.

“Do you want to go?” Kara asks softly.

Lena whirls around. “Do you want me to?”

Kara’s shoulders fall. “No.”

“One rule.”

The blonde tips her head back at the reminder, closing her eyes with another sigh. “No, I want you to stay Lena, but I want you to go if you’re miserable.”

“Why?” Lena laughs sourly. “Because I just bring the whole mood down, right? It’s not any fun to be around someone who just makes everything so painfully awkward, no one wants to pretend they _ like _ the girl who can’t get over the past.”

“What are you even talking about?” Kara takes a step forward. “You’re not making anything awkward, everybody loves you. They were all thrilled when I said you were coming.”

“What did Alex tell you?” 

“What? Nothing,” Kara answers far too quickly. 

“Don’t you dare lie to me,” Lena spits, but it sounds more like the first plea before the crash. “Not about this. Back at the bar, when she first came in. What were you two talking about?”

“It’s not important.”

“Then it shouldn’t be a problem to just tell me.”

Kara swallows, her bottom lip twitches. “She wants us to stop.”

“Why?”

“Why does it matter?” Kara huffs, shaking her head like these questions are all rhetorical. “I’m not going anywhere, I made you a promise.”

“Why does she want us to stop?” Lena repeats firmly. 

“Because you’re leaving!”

This isn’t where it works, this isn’t the part where it _ fucking _ works.

Kara’s eyes have never looked so far. “You’re just gonna leave in the end, Lena. And she thinks I shouldn’t put myself through that again.”

Heart pounding violently, Lena licks her lips. “Of course I’m leaving, what else would I do?”

Kara looks to the floor.

“Stay?” Lena’s voice splinters. “Why would I ever stay?”

Kara’s mouth flattens out, her lips pressed together like she’s holding something in, and Lena wants to pound her fists against her chest and beg her to just let her in.

“It’s not my fault, you know.” Lena knows it’s too late, she knows her vision is too blurry to stop this mess from spilling down her face. “It’s not my fault you’re a pathetic wreck of a person because you let someone else become so important to you.”

Rather than recoil, rather than stumble from the blow, Kara just smiles tenderly, sadly. She watches Lena with unequivocal patience that just makes the tears burn hotter, because Kara knows, she _ knows _, she knows what Lena means to say, who she is really talking about but is too afraid to admit. 

Because this is not about Kara, it was never about Kara.

“It’s not my fault you feel like you’re nothing without me,” Lena chokes out, her ribs shaking. “It’s not my fault that nothing makes you feel like you did before, that you’re terrified this is all just some cosmic joke to see how fucking foolish the universe can prove you out to be. It’s not my fault that you _ broke _ my _ heart _ and now you can’t stand to see how I am just _ fine _ without you.”

Damp eyes and stoic poise, Kara takes another slow step forward. “Lena…” 

But Lena scrabbles around to face the mirror once more, jerking the faucet on. She exhales shakily, blinking quick and hard until her vision starts to clear, wiping her wet cheeks before she stuffs her hands under the streaming water. 

She clears her throat. “Why did you quit CatCo?”

Kara sighs softly behind her, but Lena doesn’t look up. “Maybe we should just call it a night.”

“You had it, Kara.” Lena makes the mistake of looking into the mirror, catching her blotchy red eyes before she looks to the reflection of the blonde behind her. “You said being a journalist was the job of your dreams, you lied to me for months to get it, and you got it. Why would you give that up?”

“I really think we should just save this—”

“Don’t treat me like a child.” Lena shuts the water off and spins around once more, her hands still dripping. “If you can’t be honest with me, then this is useless. You might as well listen to your sister and go now.”

Kara runs a hand back through her hair, the first twinge of annoyance resurfacing as she paces away, her other hand rubbing at her mouth.

Still, instead of answering, Kara just looks at her with exasperation. “Why do you even care why I left?”

“Because I still care about you,” Lena snaps. “That’s the whole fucking problem.”

Finally, a split, a crack. Kara’s face crumples, even if for less than a second, the mask falls and this is what finally slices under Kara’s skin.

“They asked me to interview you.” Her expression evens out, flat like pristine apathy. “You had just bought back LuthorCorp, but were refusing interviews. So my boss came to me and asked if I could use our… ‘personal relationship’ to get you to speak to me. I told her we didn’t have one. So she told me to go check you out anyway, talk to your friends, your coworkers, your mom, find out whatever I could if I couldn’t get a quote from you.”

Lena thinks back to an office, another time she only wanted to forget, waiting for Kara to show up and ask her to stay just so Lena could feel the satisfaction of telling her no. 

She catches a flash of Kara’s tongue as it runs along the bottom row of her teeth. 

“I told her no, and she told me it wasn’t a question. So I told her I quit.”

Lena’s not sure if her heart’s in her stomach or if her stomach is in her throat, but either way everything is twisted and misplaced, and this nausea might just drown her.

“Why would you do that?” she whispers.

Kara shrugs limply, looking about as exhausted as Lena feels. 

“No, seriously, why the fuck would you do that, Kara?”

“Because.” She frowns like it should be obvious. “I broke my heart, too. And I couldn’t work for the people who were asking me to do it again.”

When the tears fall again, Lena makes no move to stop them. 

She hates this part, that much she knows. She doesn’t know if this is supposed to be what moving on looks like, if this is the first whiff of progress or _ what, _ because it’s not at all the relief she’s been starving for. It was the simplest idea to begin with, Lena had it all planned out, she knew what she was getting into when she showed up at Kara’s apartment, and dammit she wasn’t fine but at least she wasn’t broken anymore.

Now? What could she possibly do with this?

Lena’s chin drops, her knuckles white as they brace against the sink behind her, and the fat tears drip down her cheeks. 

When Kara steps forward again, Lena makes no move to stop her.

Maybe it was never meant to work.

Or maybe they were just never meant to be reduced to something so simple.

It’s just a light touch, at first. Kara’s hand on hers, the pads of her fingers brushing over her stiff knuckles until Lena’s grip loosens. And then it’s Kara’s hand curling around her wrist, so delicate and slow like Lena might combust if she moves too fast. Kara’s fingers skim up her forearm, around the crook of her elbow, Lena isn’t sure if she’s stopped breathing or if this is finally the fresh air she’s been sheltering herself from. The first sob hiccups from Lena’s throat, and Kara stills. Lena’s mouth scrunches as her shoulders begin to shake, her lower lip bobbing like hot water ready to spill. 

But instead of pulling away, Kara takes one step closer.

Arms are wrapping around her, and Lena finally sags forward into her chest, letting the sobs wreck through her body. Kara doesn’t say a word, she doesn’t console her or whisper soft, assuring words because they both know there’s nothing to say. Lena just cries in Kara’s arms, clutching the wrinkled edges of her shirt and burying her face into Kara’s neck. 

She doesn’t understand why it hurts like this, why it is so much harder now than it was two years ago. She doesn’t know if she’s doing the right thing, if this is what’s best for them or if they should both just listen to Alex and stop pretending like Lena’s stubbornly broken heart is something that can be fixed. Lena doesn’t know a lot, certainly nothing she thought she did before, and perhaps the only certainty she has is that at the end of the day, this is over. Whatever it is that hurts so much now, whatever will hurt tomorrow — someday it’s going to be behind her, because Lena is leaving in three months no matter what they do.

Lena has no idea if this will work, if forgiving Kara is something she’s capable of, if forgiving herself is the true battle here. Maybe it won’t, maybe it isn’t, maybe it always was.

But maybe there’s no one right way to heal.

Lena cries, and Kara only holds her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know i still haven't responded to most of your comments the last few chapters but i love you all v much and thanks for sticking with me!


	19. keeping my head above water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi mr olive james
> 
> oh speaking of music, check out [this playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5JxrZyBJAftDdH8mEHYhTH) made specifically for this fic by @ lydluvslena ! lotta songs on there i actually listen to for inspo, bops only 
> 
> thanks dudes

As if finding a way to hide her red-rimmed eyes while also giving a non-concerning, hasty excuse to leave before Kara’s friends could notice anything was amiss — as if all of this wasn’t embarrassing enough, Lena then has to deal with a call from Lillian the next morning.

_ “Why were you crying on a cardboard box in someone’s basement last night?” _

Having just come home from her usual morning run, Lena still has a fine sheen of sweat sticky over her skin, leaving her hair plastered to her neck. She was just coming off the elevator when the armband on her bicep began to vibrate, and upon checking it, her mother’s face lit up her screen. 

One hand holding a fresh to-go cup of coffee dangling at her side, Lena rolls her eyes. “Good morning to you too. What are you upset about now?”

_ “There’s a video of you on YouTube already at thirty-thousand views making some sort of attempt at singing. Would you care to explain, or should I go ahead and assume you’ve lost all sense of reason and call in a Zoloft refill?” _

Lena sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Xanax.”

_ “What?” _

“It was Xanax, not Zoloft.”

_ “Is that a yes, then?” _

“No, stop, I don’t want anything.” Lena huffs, shaking her head exasperatedly. “I just went to a bar with a friend, it’s called karaoke. I don’t know if you would have heard of it, requires actually understanding the meaning of fun.”

_ “Friend? What friend?” _

“Just… a friend, mother. I don’t need to run every person I know through you first.”

_ “You see, you do, actually. I haven’t let anyone speak to you without signing an NDA first in over a year, so if you would like to keep seeing them, then I expect to be put in touch with immediately.” _

“Lillian, that’s really not necessary, it’s not like—”

_ “I’ll be waiting.” _

The line clicks dead, and Lena whips the phone down with a curse.

Beside her in the hotel suite foyer, Kara grimaces sympathetically. She hovers still by the elevator like Lena might change her mind and send her away. Her clean, mussed blonde hair frames her face in small loops, and there’s a refreshing rosy tint to her cheeks that has nothing to do with the alcohol from last night, just a touch from the brisk temperature of such an early-morning hour, and Lena wonders not for the first time how long she was waiting outside for.

“Everything okay?” Kara asks.

Lena switches her coffee to her other hand as she stuffs her phone into her shorts. “Yes, fine, my mother is just being a paranoid lunatic as usual.”

“Oh, so that’s where you get it from?”

Lena shoots Kara a look, one that is meant to be more stern than it feels, especially considering Kara’s innocently raised eyebrows and polite, open smile. 

But a smile breaks. “Shut up.”

Kara just laughs.

With Lillian’s words looming around her ears, it’s killed her post-run blissful mood, the light and airy version of herself that is always so much more productive and lenient with Kara, and now Lena finds herself settling back into something uneasy again. 

But to her credit, she doesn’t send Kara away, just wordlessly kicks off her running shoes and heads down the hall for the living room, and the gentle pads of Kara’s soft footsteps behind her soon follow. 

Lena had woken up at half past five in the morning with sand-crusted eyes and a headache. Even when she doesn’t drink, she’s still pounced on with a needle-prodding hangover, because apparently letting herself tap into a well of emotions she’s kept repressed for two years is just as poisonous as a line of reckless tequila shots. 

So, she did what she always does when she needs space from her own sour contempt — she goes for a run. 

An hour later, Lena was still catching her breath, hands braced on her waist through the heaving rise and fall of her chest as she came back up the sidewalk only to find Kara standing outside the hotel, leaning against a post office drop box, with two paper to-go cups stacked in one hand, the other thumbing through her phone.

Everything was layered by a faint pink hue as the sun was only minutes from bursting over the skyline, the precipice of daylight. It wasn’t dark, but the city was frozen in a rosy capture of stillness, making everything feel far more timeless than a Saturday morning should warrant. Kara standing in the middle of it, most of the city still not awake, Lena wondered if she was still dreaming.

She had glanced around skeptically, certain that Kara was here for some miraculous _ other _ reason, but as she slowly came up the rest half of the block, Kara finally looked up with a shy, pretty smile, stuffing her phone into the back of her jeans. 

“Hey, morning.”

Lena found herself smiling tentatively even through the confusion. “Hi?”

“How are you?”

“Dandy. Um, what are you doing here?”

The fact that Lena was being testy and hard-headed seemed to only fuel Kara’s sweet smile. “I just wanted to see how you were doing. After last night.”

“Oh.” Lena had swallowed thickly, her cheeks warming at the reminder of her rather embarrassing breakdown. But with Kara standing there, patient and caring like she’s just checking up on a friend with a cold, Lena found herself letting her guard down, the defensive tension in her shoulders loosening. “Yes, right. I’m fine. Just tired, honestly.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Kara pushed off from the blue mailbox and held out the smaller of the two drinks in her hands towards Lena. “I brought you coffee. I honestly wasn’t even sure if you’d still go on a run this morning, we were out pretty late.”

Even as she took the drink, the remark had made Lena’s suspicion flare again — though for what, she’s not sure. “And how did you know when I’m usually out?”

Kara smiled, and this all had reminded Lena of the days when she used to interrogate Kara, fishing for any story that didn’t line up, any leak in a watertight alibi that Kara was manipulating her all that time ago, and Kara just entertained it all in full stride.

Lena’s not sure anymore if she ever truly found out the answer.

“You mentioned it a couple weeks ago,” Kara reminded her. “We were talking about how to do one of the things on the list, the one about doing something together without talking, and you mentioned you run now.”

That had been stupidly early on, at least three weeks ago, but Lena did have the slightest memory of it, of sharing that she usually went out an hour or so after dawn. 

“Oh. That’s right. Is that why you’re here? To run? Because you’re a little late.” Lena took in Kara’s outfit skeptically, the low-hanging jeans and a fitted black t-shirt, and when she looked back to Kara’s face, the blonde had just laughed.

“No, no, don’t worry I didn’t wanna invade on your you-time. I just wanted to come and make sure you were okay.”

Lena probably found this far more touching than she should, biting on her bottom lip and squashing down any threat of another smile. She swallowed. “Thank you, that’s… that’s really sweet of you, actually.”

“Nah, it’s nothing.” Kara had shrugged like she truly thought so, like it wasn’t an extremely kind gesture after how much Lena had unloaded on her the night before, and to have come so out of her way this early in the morning.

Which reminded her. “I thought you had to work this morning?”

“I do, but not ‘till ten.”

Lena of course felt bad, but it was a different guilt from that which she felt at the bar last night. This was for Kara waking up so many hours earlier than she needed to after god knows how long she spent caring for Lena, and then how little Lena was giving her to work with for her effort. A simple text could have sufficed, Kara easily could have done so and left it at that to appease her conscience. Although, Lena likely wouldn’t have answered anyway, would have put it off for hours until she inevitably forgot, and maybe Kara had considered this, or maybe Lena was putting far too much thought into the schematics.

“Anyway.” Kara smiled that same sweet, boyish closed-mouth press of her lips. “I’ll let you get on with your day. I’ll see next week?”

With her fingers tapping antsily, Lena nodded. “Yes, of course, I’ll text you when I know what day I’ll have time.”

Kara nodded in return, her smile lopsided, and after a slow rock on her heels like she might have been stalling, Kara began to turn away.

“Would you—”

Kara turned back, and Lena was suddenly much more awake.

“Would you like to come up?” Lena waved a hand over her shoulder. “I have to take a shower but… I don’t have to go into the office for another hour or so. Only if you have time, of course.”

Kara’s gentle smile transformed into a wide, gleaming grin, her face lit up like glowing city lights, and Lena’s chest clenched.

“Yeah, sure. I’d love to.”

Now, Kara is following Lena deeper into the suite while the first whisper of anxiety murmurs in Lena’s ear as she mulls over what Lillian said.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” 

Lena chuckles wryly, if only to mask her discomfort. “I would’ve thought you already satisfied quota of listening to my problems.”

“Eh, we might as well keep the streak going.” Kara shrugs. “But you obviously don’t have to if you don’t want to. Just, you can.”

Kara’s voice lilts up like she was about to add something else, like she hadn’t quite finished the sentence, like she was reigning back a forbidden _ always, _ but Lena knows she’s likely not astute enough to recognize this so precisely.

“It’s nothing, really.” She chews on her bottom lip. “But it does… concern you, in a way.”

Kara drops the indifference, a speck of unease in her eyes as they round the corner of the hall into the living room, and Kara sinks reflexively into the stool at the breakfast bar like she’s been here dozens of times before. 

“Oh, okay. Uh, how so?”

“Apparently there’s a video from last night.”

“Okay…” Kara looks like she’s trying far too hard to predict where Lena’s headed with this.

“It’s nothing, just a stupid thing of me singing, I think.” Lena wrings her hands together, hovering on the living room edge. “I don’t really care about that, I’m used to it. But my mother saw it.”

“Right.” Kara’s brow furrows cutely. “Does she want an invite to the next one or something?”

“She wants you to sign an NDA,” Lena rushes out. “I’m sorry — I don’t actually have many friends, really none except for Sam, and Lillian made even her sign one. She makes pretty much anyone I have an interaction with outside of L-Corp do it, and I know it’s a bit extreme, so I completely understand if you don’t—”

“I’ll do it.” 

Lena’s hands still, lifting her head to look at Kara. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, ‘course.” Kara laughs like Lena’s just asked her to sign the check for dinner. “I don’t mind. And who knows, it might give you some peace of mind too.”

Lena’s lips turn down. “I would never ask you to do that, not for this.” Her stomach twists in on itself, and Lena clenches her jaw before she turns away and paces away. “It defeats the purpose anyway.”

Kara’s smart enough to not say anything more, and the conversation promptly ends there. There’s a new tension between them now that wasn’t there downstairs, nothing like the cautious reticence of being taken by surprise, but just a queasy pressure building low in Lena’s chest. She knows its her own doing, that she’s just being petty and reading too much between the lines, because Kara didn’t mean anything by what she said, but it irks under her skin all the same. Perhaps it’s not for how it suggests Kara to consider her a certain way, but rather it implicates Lena instead, what they’re doing here, leaves her with something far stickier than guilt. 

Lena makes a vague sort of gesture to the suite, encouraging Kara to make herself at homeLena leaving Kara to her own devices while she heads for a shower. 

Lena’s still struggling to sort out her residual thoughts from last night, the echoing pangs of anxiety. She knows her anger and frustration aren’t directed at Kara by any means. While most of her time at the bar had been leading up to the notion that she was going to call the entire thing off and dismiss this silly plan, she ended the night with a little more confidence. In herself or the process, she can’t be sure. She still has no idea what it will look like when it works, if it ever will, but something changed last night between them. It was ugly, it hurt like hell, but it at least reminds Lena of something familiar and comfortable. And that’s progress, isn’t it?

It was enlightening, to say the least, to see those flashes of the old Kara when she’s with her friends. She doesn’t know what it means that Kara’s face falls when she’d look from one of her friends to Lena, and she doesn’t know what it means that Kara’s eyes are far softer for Lena than anyone else. They’re contradicting, they’re both inconsistencies that are far too dangerous to entertain.

It’s not until she’s stripping the tight spandex that clings to her skin like saran wrap, alone in the bathroom with the acute awareness that she’s entrusted Kara to wander the apartment however she pleases, without supervision, that Lena realizes this is the first time Kara’s been here since their argument about Lillian. She supposes this is now their chance to revisit that failed attempt of Lena trying to adjust with Kara existing in her home. It’s supposed to help build trust, or something, it’s about letting Kara back into an intimate space, and Lena before had all but slammed the door in Kara’s face at the first personal inquiry. Now, with hardly a second thought, she’s let Kara run rampant as she pleases.

When she twists on the rush of the waterfall shower — another tacky, unnecessarily flashy commodity of the suite that she can’t help but secretly adore — waiting for it to warm up before stepping under, Lena drums her fingers absently on the cool granite counter. 

Should she… make breakfast, or something? Inviting someone over usually implies she provide some sort of entertainment, and with how they only have an hour before they have to go their separate ways for work, anything like watching something on the television or having a drink feels far too… nighttime. These exercises are far simpler to navigate when they’re actually planned ahead. Even though karaoke and Kara’s coming over now qualify for things on the list, they’re not just randomly pulling these out of their asses, it still leaves Lena uncertain as to how to go about it. How to proceed without a week to prepare and outline beforehand.

Because they’re not friends, despite what she told Lillian. The best way to put it is business associates, two people working together to the same goal, and even that Lena can recognize is a stretch. But still, with any business meeting, she likes to go in with an organized strategy, a prepared intention. These last-minute accidental drops into an activity give her no time to mentally brace herself, and this makes her nervous. Naturally. 

But after a month of this, nothing was really beginning to feel much different aside from Lena just feeling much shittier than she did before running into Kara again, and it wasn’t until last night — the first spontaneous exercise — that things began to shift_ . _ So maybe the appropriate technique is to have a more organic approach, to let these happen naturally with a vague, guiding hand to keep them running along the list, but without actively forcing it into clean-cut sessions. Lena can try all she wants, but forgiveness can’t be scheduled in like a biweekly conference when the time is convenient.

So. Perhaps improvisation it is. It’s not that Lena feels better today, per se, after addressing the topics they did last night, but she knows it’s necessary, these difficult conversations. Because Lena can’t be passive aggressive and dismissive forever, that will get them nowhere, and oh god Lena can see how Kara’s _ trying. _Who is Lena to punish her for that?

It would have been one thing if Kara just never took the job. Because that wouldn’t have been for Lena, that much she was certain she made clear. When she left Roulette for the last time, Lena all but told her to take the job anyway, it didn’t make a difference to her, it was over either way, Lena would never know. If Kara hadn’t, then that was for herself, her own dignity or whatever.

But the fact that Kara did it because her boss wanted her to squeeze another story out of Lena, and she told them no? Kara said it was for her own sake, but how is it not also because of her guilt over Lena? If Lena had somehow known and found a way to tell Kara that she was okay with seeing her again and giving her an interview, Kara never would have quit. It’s an impossible scenario, Lena knows there’s no way she could have known, and frankly she’s not sure what she would have done anyway. 

Bitterly, reluctantly, she must consider that she would have been in far too selfish a pit of her heartbreak to give Kara the leniency she needed.

Maybe Kara cares about Lena, okay, she can accept that. She knows that Kara always cared for her as a friend, and Kara would be this wracked with guilt if she had to live with betraying any of her friends, Lucy or Winn or Kelly, anyone. Lena’s not special in that regard, she understands that now, Kara is not a soulless villain. It doesn’t change the rancid culpability pressing down on Lena’s shoulders that she all but destroyed Kara.

Maybe it was by Kara’s choice, her own actions, but Kara never would have been like this if she hadn’t met Lena. 

Kara can’t move on because she can’t forgive herself, she’s holding herself back. It’s rather simple, really — Lena needs to forgive Kara to move on, and once she does that, Kara won’t feel so guilty anymore either, she’ll no longer be suffering, and she can move on as well. Because no, Lena doesn’t doubt how they were truly friends once, but she’s not some grand exception either. She’s not this silly, romanticized figure that Kara thinks Lena is, Kara is just so consumed with her own remorse that she’s imagined Lena to be this idealized prize she can’t live without. 

Kara’s misguided, that’s all. When Lena forgives her, and Kara thus forgives herself and has the proper insight to realize she doesn’t need Lena in her life, she’ll be fine. At peace, finally. Lena knows this. That bullshit about not being able to live without Lena, it’s ridiculous, Kara needs the same thing Lena does.

On a regular morning after her run, Lena typically just sips her coffee and works through her emails before she leaves for work, and her assistant will have a greek yogurt parfait ready for her when she arrives. It was Kara’s choice to come up, Lena knows, but it hardly seems like they can count this as an item on the list if they don’t actually _ do _ something, if they don’t try and make something of their moment here.

As she steps out of the glass encasing and towels of her hair, Lena mentally runs through her stock of food in her kitchenette, sifting through whatever old groceries Sam has left behind for her. But all she ends up recalling is a half-empty Aunt Jemima box of pancake mix, half a carton of milk that is likely expired by now, an old avocado that will start rotting any day now, and some stale herbal popcorn she bought on a whim for a snack last week but never ended up finishing.

Before changing into her clothes for the day, Lena picks up the hotel receiver and phones the front desk. Fifteen minutes later, she’s answering the door and collecting the room service.

Kara was standing at the window with crossed arms, staring out into the expanse of the city when Lena emerged, only looking over her shoulder briefly as Lena zipped by for the door before turning back. She still doesn’t understand Kara’s fascination for a city she’s lived in for years, because this high up it hardly even looks real. It looks like something out of a movie, just a long pan from an expensive drone, a theatrically edited display.

Lena is setting the covered silver tray down on the breakfast bar, just about to ask Kara about this fixation, when the blonde begins sniffing at the air and turns around.

Kara’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “Please tell me you didn’t order me breakfast.”

Lena pulls the lid off, revealing a short stack of crispy, golden waffles, garnished with a dolce syrup drizzle and a scatter of various berries, and Kara’s mouth drops open.

A bit sheepish, Lena shrugs. “Well it’s certainly not for me.”

“You’re not having any?”

“God no, it’s too early for anything like that.”

Kara hops onto a barstool eagerly, already tugging the tray towards her and scooping up the cutlery. “Okay, you’re just gonna have to pretend I’m being a lot more polite about this,” she says before stuffing a bite of the sweet dough into her mouth.

Laughing, Lena turns back around to pour their lukewarm coffees into mugs and depositing them in the microwave. “It’s fine, I’m fairly certain the tear stains I left in your shirt will never come out, so. Think we’re passed the formalities.”

When Lena turns back around, Kara is already almost halfway into her plate, practically inhaling the food, but it’s not until Lena’s set a mug down in front of Kara that she notices how Kara’s watching her with the barest wrinkle forming between her eyebrows. 

“What?”

“Nothing,” Kara answers quickly, returning back to her waffles. Lena considers calling the one rule, but Kara’s mouth scrunches to one side thoughtfully like she’s remembering it herself, and the blonde looks up again. “Just, um, thanks. For breakfast, but having me over too.”

“Oh, sure.” Lena’s stomach is starting to hurt, but she puts on an easy smile, and it’s a little ironic to realize how she now channels Kara’s natural, evasive nonchalance. “But you don’t have to thank me.”

Now it’s Kara’s turn to smile, and she waves her fork demonstratively. “I do, it’s on the list. Back side, third of the way down — show appreciation.”

“Oh excuse me,” Lena laughs. “Here I thought your gratitude might have been genuine.”

“Nope, there’s not a single genuine thing about me, didn’t you know?” Kara stuffs in another mouthful, smiling cheekily around it, even as a dribble of the creamy syrup dribbles down from the corner of her mouth, and Lena laughs again. 

“Alright Kara, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Kara’s smile bulges with her stuffed cheeks, and it continues to remain on her face even as she digs back into her waffles. She goes for gulps of coffee every so often between bites, and Kara quickly works her way through the dish, while Lena just sips at her own coffee, watching Kara carefully.

Kara’s just cleaning up the last of the berries when Lena finally speaks again.

“I wanted to be the one to thank you, actually.” 

Sucking a smear of syrup from her finger, Kara looks up at her with wide eyes. “For what?”

Lena gives her a droll expression. “You know… not just for entertaining my never-ending mood swings last night but, for coming to check in this morning, too.” Lena’s fingers tighten around her mug, and she shifts her weight to her other foot, trying to alleviate a nervous edge. “It means a lot.”

“Don’t do that.”

Lena lifts a brow. “You can show appreciation but I can’t?”

“No, I mean.” Kara shakes her head, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Don’t downplay your feelings like that, as just some random mood swing. You don't… you don’t need to dismiss it like that. I want to know how you feel, even if it’s hard to hear.”

A hiccup that isn’t physical, Lena just stares back at Kara for a moment, her unflinching fervor, this is the first time she’s really seen how blue Kara’s eyes look again.

Thinking of Alex’s discouragement and of her own promise to get them both passed this, Lena’s jaw loosens. “I want to know how you feel, too.”

Kara smiles, not like before, not like today, but like Lena may never have bothered to see the one that was here all along.

xx

They come down to Lena’s least favorite item on the list.

It seems so morbidly ridiculous that Lena can’t even acknowledge it. She has half a mind to call it quits before they even try, because it’s just inconvenient and random, and only six of the therapists even recommended this one. One actually said it would be counterproductive, and Lena is stubbornly partial to side with them if only to avoid this whole silly ordeal, but.

It’s already on the list, Kara’s already seen it, and they’ve already half-planned for it.

_ Half _ meaning, Lena shared her thoughts on how the natural opportunities to satisfy items from the list are much more beneficial than intentionally pencilling them in ahead of time. Kara was inclined to agree. And so while there was no upfront plan to get this exercise done, a chance for it comes up.

A week after a suspiciously normal, uneventful lunch together at a sandwich shop near L-Corp — one that ended up having Lena subtly text her assistant to push off her next meeting by another thirty minutes because her and Kara were caught up discussing a potential piece of equipment SI was developing for L-Corp next year — one of these “opportunities” arise.

Their schedules never align neatly, and their paths would never cross naturally. So in order for any organic sort of plan to emerge, they’ve settled to phone calls, about three or four times a week. Whenever one of them has a free moment, they call the other, and if something comes up in conversation, then, well. 

It’s a fairly linear logic.

Kara was telling Lena off-handedly that Alex was pulling an all-nighter at the library for something for school, because it was nearby Spheerical Industries and she had to be there early in the morning, and Lena had given a neutral sort of response, when Kara had hesitated, a pause so long that even Lena noticed it while only half-listening.

“What is it?” she asks absently. She’s scrolling through a financial document the board offered for her new side project, and the numbers aren’t particularly ideal. 

_ “Um… I mean, you know better than I do, but um… isn’t… like, doesn’t it say… I actually don’t remember, but— _”

“Kara,” Lena hums, the corner of her mouth perking up as the blonde continues to ramble. 

_ “Yeah, right, sorry. I’m just, you know you had on the list that we should try going to each others’ places again?” _

“Yes, I did write it.”

_ “Right, and like, it says we should try engaging in old routine, right?” _

Lena’s narrowing her eyes at a certain clause that’s more conservative than she was expecting in terms of staffing, it doesn’t particularly add up to what she’d expected for her project, and she’s mouthing the words to herself.

_ “Lena?” _

“Yes, sorry darling, what is it?” She shakes her head distractedly, realizing she’s not quite paying Kara as much attention as she deserves while she works, but it’s not until Kara is far too silent over the phone that Lena realizes what she’s said.

She considers apologizing, but — what is she sorry for, really?

_ “Um, I was just — I was saying, uh…” _

Guilty for her inattention, Lena turns away from her computer monitor briefly. “I’m sorry, I’m listening. What are you suggesting?”

_ “It says on the list that one of us should try sleeping over at the other’s, again.” _

Lena blinks at the rush of Kara’s words, cocking her jaw. She doesn’t need to check the sheet of paper that’s wrinkled to hell by now in her desk at the hotel, she practically has it all memorized by now. And this is definitely a point that she listed, and it’s another one of those things that Lena almost never did note down in the first place, like the retreat, because of how ridiculous it seemed.

But Kara continues. _ “And, um, I mean, I guess I could always go to yours but you don’t really like it at the hotel anyway, not that I’m saying you like my place either, but it’s the same place I lived in as before, so I feel like it’s more relevant, and since Alex isn’t here, it just, it like, um…” _

Lena’s amusement surpasses her apprehension. “Are you going to be alright?”

_ “No, I don’t think so.” _ Kara sighs. _ “Do you want to come over?” _

She doesn’t, and this is by far the worst idea either of them have had so far.

But it is on the list.

“I’ll be finished up here in an hour.”

xx

The rules of this “sleepover” are loose, especially coming from the pockets of couple’s therapists over a few phone calls. 

Lena’s pretty sure she’s supposed to actually be sleeping in Kara’s bed, because that’s what they used to do before, but the psychologists never actually specified, and that’s probably more for couples who actually want to get back together.

Not that they were ever even—

Lena elects to sleep on the couch.

They only argue about it for two minutes. Kara makes a very chivalrous attempt to at least try and be the one who sleeps on the couch and give Lena her bed, but Lena argues that that would make this entire thing even weirder, so. Lena arrives at Kara’s apartment just twenty minutes shy of midnight.

And she can’t sleep, obviously. She’s bone-tired, but the absurdity of this arrangement keeps her staring up at the ceiling with her fingers laced across her abdomen, and even though she’s grateful for the space, she can’t help but wonder what more Alex has said that Kara waited until her sister was gone for the night to suggest this, wonders if the sister even knows she’s here.

It’s nothing to do with comfort. She’s pretty sure Kara’s left her with her favorite pillow, the thick tempurpedic one with a four-leaf clover pillow case, and the couch is lined with a crisp, clean sheet while the blanket draped over Lena is perfectly cozy, light enough to balance the lingering heat of the summer’s end but warm enough with autumn just around the corner. 

It’s ideal, it should be simple, it’s on the list, it was fairly organic. But alas, just when Lena checks her phone, hoping it might be a somewhat reasonable hour to get up and pretend it’s morning so she can get on with her life, it’s not even two yet.

She closes her eyes with a quiet groan.

“Lena?”

Her eyes blink open, cautious. “...Yes?”

“Are you still awake?”

When she sits up, she can just make out Kara’s shadowy form from the entryway to her bedroom, hovering on the edge of the living room like this isn’t her own apartment. 

“Yeah,” she answers softly.

She hears the quiet pads of Kara’s feet across the hardwood floor before she can really see her coming closer. 

“Can’t sleep?”

Lena hugs her knees to her chest. “Not really. You?”

“Nope.”

Kara continues to hover, and now that she stands just beside the couch, Lena can make out the pinch of her mouth and the intense thought behind her eyes.

“This is stupid, isn’t it?” Kara asks.

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

Kara sits down on the armrest of the couch at Lena’s feet, her shoulders slouching. “Do you… I mean, um… you wanna order a pizza, or something?”

Lena purses her lips, the arms wrapped around her legs loosening as she slowly lowers them. She’s not hungry, and she hasn’t had a takeout pizza in nearly two years, but.

“You call, I’ll find a movie?”

“Deal.”

They don’t really ever get around to actually sleeping that night, and they don’t talk much either except for brief comments between films to discuss what they should watch next. Kara’s never seen _ Interstellar _ , and Lena immediately puts the purchase on her credit card over Kara’s Roku. In turn, Lena has never seen _ The Wizard of Oz _ and Kara yelps indignantly and scrambles to the shelf underneath the TV before fishing out an old VHS tape — which, Lena didn’t know anyone still used those. Pork Belly joins them halfway through their marathon, curling onto the sofa in the divide between them, and maybe Lena scratches at a silky patch of fur behind his ear a few times distractedly. She didn’t miss him, god no, but he does purr contentedly under her touch, and it’s strangely relaxing, settles down the anxiety she felt upon first coming over. Kara doesn’t remark on it, but Lena does catch the wake of a smirk from her peripheral, illuminated by the pale blue glow of the TV.

Given they both chose unnecessarily long films, they don’t finish until nearly seven, and Kara’s yawning into her elbow. She claims she’s not going back to sleep, but Lena noticed her nodding off a few times during the last movie. Lena’s neck is sore from sitting slumped into a couch all night, her eyes burn with a dry sting from staring at a screen in the dark for so long, and Lena has just enough time to hurry home for a quick shower before she has to get to work, definitely having to skip her run.

She still has a good day.

The exercise didn’t really work, but maybe it didn’t need to. 

xx

The week after that, she joins Kara and her friends for another game night. She pairs up with Kara for most things, Alex alternates between unreadable, stony stares and the occasional scowl at Lena the entire night (though this might be for Lena’s stealing of her usual game partner), and they lose at just about every game they play. Lena doesn’t stay any longer than everyone else this time, she gets ready to leave at the first departure.

However, she does help Kara carry the various board games back to the bottom of her armoire just before she leaves, after Kara’s insistence that Lucy still hasn’t won back her privileges to know where they’re kept.

It’s as Lena’s turning around to leave Kara’s room that she sees it.

Kara’s makeshift vanity is really just a cluttered white desk with an old, wood-framed mirror propped against the wall behind it, its paint old and chipped. The whole thing as much of a mess as it always has been — a few paperback books strewn about, a mess of makeup spilled over the surface and some tipped-over hair products, inside-out clothes hanging off the edge and piled onto the chair.

But the disorder isn’t what catches her eye.

“What is that?” Lena asks, pointing to an array of small, drooping figurines that hang above the mirror by a fine piece of translucent string, tacked to the wall.

Kara’s a few steps ahead of her, but at Lena’s question she comes back with a frown to see what Lena’s referring to. And once she does, her expression flattens out, and Lena almost doesn’t see the faint pink touch at the tips of Kara’s ears.

“They’re… paper cranes.”

“Made from cocktail napkins.”

Kara sticks her tongue against the inside of her cheek, her lips pursed, and she nods. “Uh-huh.”

“Did you make them?”

“No.”

“Are they—” Lena swallows the words, unsure why she’s suddenly terrified of the answer. “Are those the ones that I made?”

Kara looks nearly as guilty as she had when she confessed about the article. “Maybe.”

“From when we met?”

“It was like, the second or third time, but… yeah.”

“How are those still intact, I — How long have those been _ up _ there?”

Kara scratches the back of her head, looking back to the string of cranes like she might find an excuse somewhere hidden in them. “Uh, I put them up like a few days after, I think.”

“Why have I never noticed them before?”

Kara shrugs, sheepish. “I don’t know? I guess we didn’t really hang out in my room a lot, we usually slept at yours.”

Lena looks back at the cranes, her throat slick and tense. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you keep them? They’re made of napkins_ , _ Kara, they’re garbage.”

When Kara doesn’t answer right away, Lena turns to her again, and Kara’s biting her lip. 

Her voice is low, quiet. “I told you I’d keep them safe.”

This was always the part she chased with her favorite single-malt scotch, the the bitter taste of sorrow she always wanted to mask. But maybe she was just afraid of remembering how sweet she always knew this would still be.

xx

Only a couple days after Lillian asked for it, Kara had signed the NDA, Lena scanned a copy, and it had all been emailed over. Lena all but forgot about it until now, two weeks later when her mother has finally gotten around to filing it with the rest.

It’s still early, not even dark yet, and Lena is just coming back into her office after a meeting with a newly hired faculty consultant who is an expert on adolescent health development services when her phone starts to ring. Lillian’s face lights up her screen, but this time it’s for a video chat and not their typical voice call, and Lena answers with a smirk on her face.

“Hey, didn’t realize you actually knew what FaceTime was.” She quickly props her phone against her computer screen so her hands are free to shrug off her blazer, which she then drapes across the back of her chair. “What’s going on?”

She can’t make out much beyond Lillian’s serious face and chiseled cheekbones, but she can tell Lillian’s in the back of a moving car, a black leather headrest behind her and the faint, blurry passage of a window.

“Tell me there is a second Kara Danvers in National City, or I may actually have to reconsider your mental capacity to be running any projects on your own.”

Lena gives a wry laugh, crossing her legs. “Oh hello mother, why yes thank you, my day’s been lovely, how are you doing?”

“Don’t be smart with me right now.” True to her word, Lillian’s eyes are piercing and sharp, her tone subarctic. “What is this about? Why are you interacting with her again?”

To be fair, Lena has been expecting a call somewhat along these lines, she’s just surprised it took Lillian so long to notice. “I’m just doing some business with her,” Lena answers vaguely.

“Neither me nor the board have approved any sort of collaborations with CatCo. Try again.”

“Okay, technically she’s a caterer now.”

“Lena.” 

She feels more like a child being scolded than ever, especially with the way Lillian takes a very obvious, steadying breath, looking somewhere behind the camera, exasperation from every facial muscle. 

Lillian doesn’t take long to regather herself. “I can’t approve this, whatever it is that you’re doing.”

“Okay,” Lena drawls, raising an eyebrow. “Good thing I’m not asking you to. And I don’t see the problem, she signed an NDA like you asked, there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

There’s a rustle of static as Lillian sits forward abruptly, giving Lena an incredulous expression. “I won’t let you jeopardize everything we have worked for over something so trivial as an old flame.”

“And what does my relationship with her have anything to do with L-Corp?”

“I was patient when you hired me, Lena, I did not ask for the details of your quarrel with her.” 

The hard edge to Lillian’s bite is far harsher than Lena expects, it’s enough alone to make Lena flinch, it pulls her out of the child-like amusement at antagonizing her mother and makes the room around her feel suddenly much, much colder. 

“But you were pitiful when you came to me, in no condition to be running a business. We could afford your incompetence then, we had enough time on our side to get our assets in order, but let me be perfectly clear — we are on a strict schedule, and this next year will be double the work either of us have done so far, we cannot manage this melodrama now, and I will _ not _ let you destroy yourself over this girl again.”

The sudden, brisk plunge of this conversation, Lena hadn’t anticipated. She knew Lillian wouldn’t be thrilled about Kara. Maybe she didn’t recognize her at the ceremony but Lillian is never one to forget a name. She knew this debate was coming, but she never prepared herself for this callous candor, something so steadfast in its cruel honesty. 

“This is nothing like before.” A dread like ice sinks low in her stomach, Lena can’t shake it off. “This is different.”

“It doesn’t matter, you need to end it.”

“I had her sign the NDA like you asked,” Lena repeats hotly, sitting up straighter. “But otherwise I don’t see how this at all pertains to you, frankly it’s none of your business.”

Lillian tilts her head, her eyes arctic even through a screen. “Your well-being has always been my business.”

Lena laughs even if it’s only to mask the wet quality of her voice. “Please do not start pretending you actually care about my well-being, that won’t help your case.”

“I care about it when it concerns the future of this organization.”

The worst part is not how she feels like she’s being treated as a young girl, like she’s not being taken seriously, no. It’s the fragility with which she stares back at her mother’s face, wondering why, after all this time, she still only craves her support.

“Right.” Lena’s chin drops and she looks down to her desk. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t put words in your mouth, you would never actually bother with the effort of acting like my mother for once.”

“You hired me as your publicist,” Lillian sighs. “Not your mother.”

“But I shouldn’t have to pay you to love me, should I?” Lena asks with a droll, dreadful smile.

She won’t cry, she won’t.

Lillian stares at her, unblinking, and for the first time in years Lena thinks she might actually have rendered her speechless, and all it took was confronting her with her own indifference.

But Lena will always be a Luthor, that will never be taken from her.

Coiled, cool, collected — Lena clears her throat, tucking her hair behind her ear. “It’s only temporary. There is no relationship, we are just working on a personal matter, and I will still be delegating management here to someone else by the end of the year.”

If she thinks this tastes like a lie, she’ll never know why.

“I’ll be back in Metropolis by New Year’s,” she continues. “And then I will never see her again. There is nothing to worry about, you have my word.”

Lillian mulls over her quiet assurance, regarding Lena with apprehensive caution, like this version of Lena that is calm and straightforward is far more unreliable. But eventually she nods, and Lena is ready to leave it at that.

She sits forward to end the call.

“Lena—”

There’s a reason Lena named her technology Hope.

“Maybe you’re right.”

It’s because you can never entrust it in real people, it’s always a mistake to think they can measure up, it’s always misplaced.

Lena’s hand hovers in the air as still as the twilight outside her window, poised inches from the red button, her breath clenched somewhere unreachable low in her throat.

Lillian exhales quietly, Lena watches her pursed lips and downward gaze more closely than she’s ever paid her mother any attention before.

“I think, perhaps, it would be wise to set boundaries here… keep our working relationship strictly professional. All this personal clout is… counterproductive, you’re right, it complicates things. I will do my best to not impose on your privacy, from here on out.”

Lena hears the unspoken words clearer than anything else.

_ I was never your mother, and that was never going to change. _

“Right.” Lena nods curtly, her nails digging into her palms, unable to hold back the twist of disdain in the curl of her apathetic smile. “Well. Here’s a boundary for you, then.”

She hangs up.

What a stupid age this is, such an unqualified time she lives in, too young to be trusted alone and too old to beg her mother to stay.

Her phone falls face-down on the desk as she leans forward across the white lacquer, dragging her hands back through her hair in frustration. 

Lillian doesn’t understand the first thing about her, she never has, and this is the only answer Lena will accept for why the blood rushes to her face and the nausea clogs her throat. There’s no use in constantly reminding each other of their relation, because they’re both right — Lena did not call because she needed a mother’s love, and Lillian did not come to give it to her. Every time Lena snottily points out who they are to each other or brings up her petulantly sour childhood, it distracts them both from the reason they’re really here, and it’s to fulfill the mission statement Lena set out all that time ago.

Lillian thinks she can’t control herself, that she will let her emotions get the better of her, so much so that it will inevitably impact her work. She thinks Lena is unstable in her heart and that she’s too naive to know how to wield it without ruining everything around her.

But she can, she does.

Lena is driven, and the reason it took all this time for her to come back to Kara and face the wreckage of her heartbreak is because Lena needed this time to re-compose herself. She ran away because she’s _ smart, _ because anything sooner would have broken her, because she needed those five hundred and ninety-one days away to thicken her skin and mold back a dignity that is impenetrable of her past mistakes.

She needed the time away to ensure she would never make them again.

Lena returned to National City to expand her organization, and she came back to Kara to close her wounds. This isn’t about proving Lillian’s doubts wrong, it’s only about committing to her objective, it’s about keeping her head separate from her heart and doing everything she sought out to do.

Lena sweeps her hair back from her face, sculpting it all back into a tie before she picks her phone up again and pulls up her conversation with Kara.

_ Why did you write it? _

Kara’s response is almost immediate, a quick stream.

** _???_ **

** _the article?_ **

** _is everything ok? _ **

Lena rolls her eyes, an annoyed snarl already curving her mouth down. She’s spent far too much time dancing around this already, her and Kara have been doing this stupid thing for eight weeks already. 

So far the only ground they’ve covered is that Kara’s spent two years letting her guilt over a meaningless fling that lasted all of three seconds consume her entire self-worth, and Lena is a self-righteous martyr with a perpetual need to wallow in her misery and paint herself a greater victim than a spoiled, privileged millionaire ever should.

It’s time to get over this, rip off the band-aid, face these silly woes Lena’s conjured demons out of.

_ Why does something have to be wrong for me to ask for the truth? _ Lena texts back. _ This is why I’m here. You have a good reason, and the sooner you tell me, the sooner we can be finished. _

** _okay_ **

** _are you still at work? i’ll come to you_ **

Another spike of cold pangs viciously in Lena’s chest at the idea of seeing Kara now, of hearing it out loud, and Lena is prompt in her response.

_ That’s not necessary, you can just tell me here. _

** _i really think we should talk about this in person_ **

_ That’s not your decision to make. _

** _i’ll be there in ten_ **

** _don’t move_ **

“Fuck.” Lena slams her phone back onto her desk exasperatedly. 

Actually, this is bullshit. She’s not going to sit here twiddling her thumbs waiting for Kara to come and kneel at her feet like Lena is some delicate sufferer.

It takes far too long to shut down and log out of her computer, Lena taps her foot impatiently as she clicks out of software update requests. She doesn’t bother with her blazer or her purse, she’ll come back for those later, for right now she just needs to get out.

The elevator takes too long, it makes too many stops on the way down, and too many people talk to her on her way down. Normally Lena is one to take the time and get to know everyone that works for her, especially because most her entire staff here are new acquisitions since coming to National City and she was eager to have them all on board, but right now she’s tense down to the marrow of her bones and the walls of this building are suffocating like car exhaust.

She knows she looks ridiculous, rushing out of the building before the sun’s even set, only half-dressed in only her slate-gray waistcoat and the ruffled white blouse beneath it. 

The cool October air slaps her in the face like slamming against the pavement. 

She doesn’t even know where she’s going, she just needs to _ go. _

Lillian is wrong, Lena thinks resolutely, her exhale quivering as she turns at random and begins to walk. She has drive, she has enough stability to keep her desires and emotions grounded, she’s not broken like Kara, she can hurt in her heart without sacrificing her dreams, and she doesn’t need anyone else to do it.

Lena’s only made half a block away before a voice from behind sharply calls out her name.

But she doesn’t stop, she doesn’t look back, and she only quickens her pace.

“What did I say?” the voice huffs as it comes closer, and Kara comes scrambling up beside Lena, panting. “Don’t move means don’t move.”

“Go away, Kara.”

“Can you slow down?” 

“How did you even get here so fast?” Lena gruffs, barely sparing a glance both ways down the street before crossing. With a yelp, Kara winds an arm around Lena’s mid back and jumps them both forward as a car goes racing closely behind them, honking all the way. Lena just shakes Kara off of her, pushing on.

“Shit, do you have a death wish?” Kara exclaims, still breathing heavily. “I was bartending a seminar a few neighborhoods over when you texted, we just finished. My coworker’s cleaning up for me, and so I ran over when — can we please stop for one second?”

Kara’s practically keeling over trying to catch her breath, tripping over her feet, but Lena keeps on.

“It was a simple question, I don’t see why you felt you had to come all the way here.”

“If it’s so simple then why are you running away?”

Lena scoffs. “I’m merely taking an afternoon walk — which you’re ruining for me by the way.”

“No, you’re running because you’re being crazy like always,” Kara says heatedly, waving her arms to show her frustration.

“Oh, just leave me alone Kara.”

“If it’s not a big deal and you want to know the truth, then why are you trying to avoid me now?”

“Because your voice is fucking annoying,” Lena snaps childishly but it comes out much weaker than she’d hoped and without any bite. Crossing the street once more and making a point to better avoid traffic, she shakes her head. “This would have been much more productive to handle over text.”

Kara only rolls her eyes at the insult but she reels at the latter remark. “No you know what? Screw productive, this isn’t one of your business deals.” 

“But it is.” Lena laughs hollowly. “I’m just gathering the necessary background information to properly formulate an opinion before I continue our course.”

Kara lets out a growl, running her hands down over her face. “Okay you want to be stubborn, fine. Then just slow down and I’ll _ tell _ you what you want to know.”

If Lena were less clouded with her own desperate paranoia, she might hesitate to question this version of Kara, the one that’s not afraid to talk back at Lena, the one that doesn’t keel over. It’s the same Kara from the bar, the one that bit back when Lena prodded about how she’s still bartending — it’s not defensive, it’s a resilience she never used to have, one that once was Lena’s.

They reach the edge of the industrial blocks, and the third street they cross takes them to the opening of the boardwalk strip lining the water. The sudden open splay of their surroundings and finally being free of the crowded, looming buildings brings the slightest reprieve, Lena breathes a little easier, but her head still spins with a manic determination. For what? She still doesn’t know.

Lena blindly stalks on, the click of her heels on the cement sidewalk shifting to echoing thuds as she crosses onto the wooden boardwalk. The closer they are to the ocean, the harsher the wind, and it swipes her hair behind her, clearing her face. The faint must of the salty sea still lingers even from underneath the tainted weight of the city pollution and the summer heat long gone, it’s still sharp and biting in her nostrils.

It brings her back to another day, with slicing wind by a water’s edge, on the cusp of the new year, Lena had never felt more alone in her life.

But now Kara is shuffling quickly after her, refusing to leave her be, her smacking footsteps against the planks jarring. Lena can feel the vibrations in the wood beneath her own feet, her breathy voice loud and rambling. She is so caught up in the abrupt change of their environment, its surreal space, that she doesn’t realize until now that Kara is even still talking.

“—say it’s nothing, ‘cause we talked just this morning about the difference between yams and sweet potatoes for like twenty minutes and everything was fine and now you’re texting me questions and running off to the beach when I try and answer them, so_ obviously _ something happened, like seriously, can you just tell me where we’re going?”

“I don’t know!” Lena whirls back around, putting her back to the horizon and causing Kara to scramble back. “I don’t— I can’t, I needed to get out, alright?”

Kara gives her an incredulous look, like she’s desperate to understand but finally realizing how far out of her reach Lena is, like she sees now that even Lena doesn’t know herself.

“Okay. That’s fine.” Her chest still heaving, Kara’s hands fall to her side tiredly, her eyes swimming and lost. “I just thought that… I thought we were actually… Just talk to me? Please?”

“Why do you always chase after me?” Lena’s heart pounds, but not from their brisk walk. “Are we going to just do this every time? I get upset and tell you to fuck off and you just keep coming back until I yell at you again?”

“Yes,” Kara answers immediately.

“But why?” Lena begs. “Is this fun for you? Do you even care about helping yourself move on, or is this some twisted, self-destructive outlet for you to keep reliving your own guilt? Do you think you owe me something?”

For the first time since Lena first presented Kara the plan, the blonde looks genuinely disoriented, like they’re both on different pages entirely and she doesn’t recognize the person she’s talking to anymore.

Lena doesn’t know if she recognizes herself, either.

“I promised you I’d stay.” Kara shakes her head, like she doesn’t know how else to explain. “This isn’t about me, I don’t… did something happen?”

The very wrath that was fueling Lena’s muscles is now what debilitates her, it’s tiring, it leaves her legs worn out and trembling, her mouth feels numb.

“Why did you do it?” she whispers. 

“It’s not gonna make you feel better.” Kara swallows, her brow furrowed. “It’s not going to make it any easier.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, because it never helped me.”

“Why don’t you want to tell me?” Lena’s pulse begins to race again. “You barely even tried to explain before.”

Kara doesn’t answer, and instead she just looks around them, at the soon-setting sun over the water and the near-empty boardwalk, the few scatters of people below walking along the beach edge. The amber glow of twilight soaks the weak melancholy painted down Kara’s face, ignites it like this day isn’t all that’s ending.

“Can we at least sit down or something?”

“Don’t treat me like a child,” Lena spits. “I can handle this like an adult.”

Kara’s eyes flare again with a dark edge. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe I didn’t want to tell you because it’s hard for _ me?” _

Kara’s the one to walk away this time, she passes by Lena and heads further down the boardwalk edge. It’s not until Lena sees the frame of her before the backdrop of the sunset that Lena remembers they have actually been here before, together. 

It was so late at night that the sun couldn’t have been any further away, just them in the black swallow of a moonless midnight. It had been cold, Kara had the loop of a thermos dangling from her finger, full of hot chocolate, her other hand tracing absent lines across Lena’s palm. Kara had just gotten off work and Lena met her here. They had sat at the foot of an old statue looking over the port, and it had been the first time Kara truly opened up to Lena without prompting, they talked about her family, and it had been the first time Lena talked about hers.

Now, she follows along behind Kara as the blonde leads them to a bench further down, just over the dark waves lapping at the shore, shimmering a foamy orange in the late rays of sunlight.

Kara sits down, hunched forward with her elbows propped over her knees and her fingers loosely clasped together. Lena means to sit with her, but a restless energy still throbs within her, and so she stays standing, arms crossed and tapping her fingers antsily against her elbow.

Just as Lena is wondering how long it will take for Kara to gather her thoughts, the blonde speaks.

“The story I wrote about Lex was more of an accident than anything.” Kara stares sightlessly at the wooden pathway, uncannily still. “My cousin died a few years ago from lymphoma. So we thought. I mean, he was sick, and there were times where we didn’t think he’d — it’s complicated, but I knew something wasn’t right. And that’s all kind of a long story, but I looked into it because of him, I wasn’t really thinking about this job offer. 

“Cat Grant was a friend of my advisor’s, from my undergrad,” Kara explains. “I’d met her once or twice, and she’d seen some of my work back then, just stuff I’d done for school, and she told me to call her if I ever needed a job. But then things with Alex… after she dropped out of med school, our parents kicked her out, I think they thought they were helping her, that it’d force her to get it together. But I went with her, I said if they were too weak to stand by her then I’d do it myself. We didn’t actually get a place together for another year, we uh… we kinda couch-surfed for a while, I guess.”

Kara laughs dryly, and Lena gets the feeling that she’s sugar-coating this part.

“So for a while, I kind of just forgot about the whole journalist thing. Alex and I were just focusing on keeping the apartment, making ends meet, you know.” Kara shrugs, still not meeting Lena’s eye, and selfishly she’s grateful, because Lena isn’t sure anymore that she could face that kind of vacancy now. “A lot of shit happened over the years, there were ups and downs, it doesn’t really matter, but um, it got to this point where Alex and I finally agreed she needed help, but we didn’t have health insurance, and we both made too much in the service industry to qualify for Medicaid. So that’s when I got set up with my job at Roulette. My old manager recommended me to Veronica because he knew I needed the money, I was always asking for overtime. And it worked, for a bit. I made a lot more money and we were both saving up and getting back on track with our student loans and some old medical bills, it looked like it would work out.

“And then Alex lost her job.” For the first time since she started talking, Kara moves. She leans back into the bench, still looking down at her hands as she picks at her cuticles. “It wasn’t her fault, she had a lot going on, we were always fighting, and she had this fiancée who—” Kara cuts herself off, clears her throat, and starts again. “Alex lost her job, and she couldn’t find work for a while. And everything we’d saved just started getting used up, Roulette wasn’t really enough for the both of us, and she just wasn’t… okay. I don’t think she had been for a while.

“So I got in touch with Cat. I read that CatCo was the top-paying media company on the west coast, and if I could work for her during the day and Roulette at night then… you know. She was still CEO at the time and she remembered me, but I had no real experience, so there wasn’t much she could do for a kid she only met a couple times half a decade ago. But she said if I could just bring her _ something _, then we could talk, we’d work something out, she’d get me a position somewhere.”

So far, Kara’s voice has been a hollow monotone, as withdrawn as an audiobook narrator, but now she wavers like the bare of the breeze. “And then Clark died. And it just… didn’t feel right.” By the clench of Kara’s jaw, the long, bloated pause she takes, Lena figures that this is a time she does not want to delve into. “It took me a year. Figuring out a national tragedy that affected hundreds of other people like Clark, all over the country, when no one else knew about it — it was an accident, I didn’t even know what I was looking for when I started. And I felt _ sick _, selling this as a story to CatCo, like I was using all their deaths to get myself a paycheck, but it also seemed like the best way to expose the truth, give it enough attention so no one could ignore it. And Alex wasn’t any better, we were both maxed out on all our credit cards, and it just… seemed like our best option.

“But by the time I had sold the story over, I realized Cat wasn’t in charge anymore, she had sold all her shares of the company to someone else, this woman named Andrea Rojas. And she said that because I had no contractual agreement with Cat about a job there, she just, the story about the Neoremedium, um, it just wasn’t enough, I guess.”

Declining from the waver before, Kara’s unsteady tone now shakes palpably, there are dips and cracks as she continues on with her head hanging low, and Lena can’t quite see her face anymore. 

“She said if I wanted a job then I had to do a follow-up.” Kara’s fidgeting hands begin to tremble in her lap. “She said you had gone under the radar after testifying against your brother, after he was arrested, and everyone wanted to know what you were doing now, that it was the next big thing or whatever, and if I was as good of a reporter as I claimed, I’d get it for her. But far as I knew, you were still in Metropolis, and I couldn’t just leave, so, I thought that was over.

“And then, Alex—” Kara’s pitch hits an all time high, and she has to pause again, it’s not until Lena hears the quiet sniff that she realizes Kara’s crying, and Lena has to turn away, crossing to the railing across the pathway.

“I thought I lost her,” Kara says quietly. “We had this fight, I’ve never — every horrible thought I’ve ever had, it just, it came to the surface and she — we’ve fought before, she’s disappeared before, sometimes for days at a time and she’d always come back, but this felt different and I thought for sure that she was just _ gone.” _

Lena hears another sniffle, and she clamps her teeth down on the inside of her cheek.

“She was in the hospital. She was… fine, I guess, but she wasn’t and she wouldn’t be, and we… we couldn’t keep putting it off. So a few weeks later, she left. I signed her up for a program, put the billing in my name because my credit was better than hers, and I promised her I’d take care of it. I had this stupid promise to _ myself _ that it was my job to _ save _ her because… that night, the night she was gone, I’ve never been so terrified in my life, and I didn’t think there could be anything worse than feeling like that again”

This is not Lena’s time to lose her strength, this is not her moment to hurt, and she does not get the privilege of doing anything but face this grief head on.

“The day she left was the day I met you.”

When she turns back around, Kara is looking at her.

“And every moment after that…” Her mouth hangs open, her teary eyes searching for the lost words. “There was this one day, you were telling me how it had been so long since you could just be yourself around someone, and I — I just kept thinking if I could be the Kara that you thought I was, just that Kara, then I wouldn’t lose Alex and I… could keep you as a friend.”

There was only ever one truth, wasn’t there?

“And I was — I was selfish, and scared, and I didn’t want to lose you. I made Alex a promise, and I was too scared to see that there was even another option until it was too late, and by the time I tried to pull the plug on the whole thing, I had already sent Andrea a preliminary draft and she… she didn’t… I was too late, and I realized — I was never protecting you from the truth, I was _ hurting _ you, taking advantage of your last name just like everyone else, and I…” 

Kara’s eye falls, her mouth crunches.

“I always knew I would lose you. As much as I fantasized otherwise, I knew it was always going to end. I wasn’t meant to deserve you from the start.”

Kara’s throat bobs, and at first she makes no move to stop the wet traces down her cheeks, hut then she rushes up from the bench, so quick to her feet that Lena steps back, watching a stranger pace back and forth as she rubs her tears away frantically. 

“Would I do it all differently if I had the chance? Of course, I would have trusted you from the start, even if it meant you would say no,” Kara says in a choked rush. “Do I regret it every day? Yes, I will never forget that I completely sabotaged my chance a truly happy life with you the very first day that I lied to you. Maybe I was wrong, maybe I was blind, and maybe it wouldn’t have had to be this way if I hadn’t been such a coward.”

Kara sags, her entire being droops with an exhaustion only the gods could understand.

“But would I ever not put my sister first? No matter what else I give up, no matter how much I hate myself for hurting you… would I ever choose anyone else before her?”

Kara exhales, her eyes glistening with the evaporated sorrow of someone who’s already lost all there is to lose.

“No, I wouldn’t.” Kara’s bottom lip quivers. “My mistake was only thinking that I had to choose in the first place. But I will always choose her, even if hurting you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I can’t be sorry, I can never apologize for that except to say I should have told you from the start that she will _ always _ come first.”

As much as it does hurt, as much as the cage sheltering her heart crumbles with this confession, as much as the last two years have chipped slowly away at her resolve and left her just a jittery reflection of someone she always wished she could be, as much as Lena’s soul _ aches, _ she can’t—

She doesn’t know how to make this about her right now. 

Kara slouches back on this boardwalk bench, still in her wrinkled work attire from the event she had been bartending today, a much more faded white button-down than Lena’s shirt, some stiff, cheap cotton with a loose black tie hanging around her neck, and the crease lines down her trousers are trademark of a second-hand department store, the kind that will never come out. Her messy blonde hair twists in frizzy wisps, falling out of her hair tie and framing unevenly around her red-blotched cheeks. 

But Kara’s only concern when she blinks up her pale blue eyes to meet Lena’s is an unflinching concern that was never for herself.

“I told you this wouldn't make you feel better,” Kara says dryly as Lena comes back up beside her, sinking down onto the bench. 

“No, it doesn’t.” Lena runs her sensitive palms over her knees, thinking of everyone cautioning them both from this, of how everyone has something to say about what they both need to hear in order to move on.

Lena swallows, and when she looks over again Kara is weakly bent over again, her hands hanging over her knees and her lips parted with the weakened duty of salvation, Lena slackens. Her doubts, the resentment, the sour contempt — even if it’s just temporary, even if it isn’t forever, even if it’s only for the present slice of comfort — her grudge wavers.

“But this isn’t about me right now.”

She slips her hand under the blonde’s forearm, twisting around her wrist until it snakes up delicately to her hand. Kara immediately coils at the first touch, much like Lena had two weeks ago in a grungy bar under the flickering green of plastic fluorescence, but she is much quicker to relax, and by the time Lena’s fingers thread through her own, Kara’s ready. She opens her hand willingly, not impatient and not pulling for anything more, simply accepting of the comfort that Lena is offering like a momentary white flag.

Lena had her heart broken, yes, but maybe she wasn’t the first.

Kara’s fingers clasp around Lena’s as the last crimson tendrils of sunlight slip beyond the horizon, and the day quickly comes to an end. They don’t remain on the boardwalk for much longer, but maybe the ending that this dusk fire settles upon them is not the end Lena had anticipated at all, maybe it’s just how another chapter begins.

“It’s okay.” Lena squeezes Kara’s hand. “You’re okay.”

xx

They don’t fight anymore, and Lena stops running. 

But this only invites a silence neither of them know what to do with, and somehow the quiet is worse.

They continue to make through the list. 

They try bowling again. Lena doesn’t find winning very fun this time around, and losing on purpose just seems to make the silence louder. 

Lena gives Kara a tour of L-Corp, but there’s not much to show other than a couple floors of offices and Lena’s own, the rest are other small business that Lillian’s rented out the space to. The real things to marvel at would be over at SI, but neither of them are very keen on running into Sam or Alex.

Kara meets a few of her staff members, she spends more time chatting with them about their work than any actual dialogue occurs between Lena and herself. Lena always introduces Kara as just an old friend, and Lena refuses to wonder why this bothers them both.

Kara brings Lena lunch at work a few more times, but more often than not Lena will work right through it, jumping from one phone call to the next with little time in between to do anything but snag quick bites of whatever is in front of her. She always tried to pay Kara back for it, but the blonde started to become more stern about splitting their meals, and it stopped feeling like this was about being polite. 

Kara usually just sits in the chair across her desk, slumped back like it might one day magically become a recliner, chewing in silence and listening absently to Lena work. Sometimes she asks Lena what she’s working on, usually Lena trails off in the middle of the sentence, and Kara never prods at her to continue. Sometimes Kara leaves without a word, just a small wave to not distract Lena for longer than a second. Lena usually notices, she usually remembers to wave or smile back. Sometimes she doesn’t.

Halloween comes. Kara invites Lena to another party at Nia’s. Lena remembers how this ended last time two years ago, the first night she spent in Kara’s bed, and this is now the first time she tells Kara no. She goes over to Sam’s instead and does Ruby’s make-up. She walks along costumeless beside Sam when they go trick-or-treating. Sam asks Lena how things are going with Kara, and Lena shrugs, tells her it’s going about as well as she could have expected. She doesn’t know if this is a lie or not, but she doesn’t mean for it to be.

No, Lena doesn’t chase Kara off anymore, but she starts turning down more and more of her suggestions, sometimes with the excuse that they’ve already done something similar enough that there’s no point in doing it again, sometimes without any excuse at all. Kara, in turn, never tells Lena no.

Lena starts running out of ideas to call Kara in the first place. She always answers when Kara calls of course, and this occurs just as frequently as before. Kara seems to develop a routine, Lena always knows when to expect her, and they always are of a relatively normal length. Lena will quietly mutter about her day at work, Kara will tell her about the office party she bartended the night before, and then the conversation comes to a lull but neither move to hang up. 

Lena’s laying flat on her back one of these times, showered, her teeth brushed, under the covers, tapping her fingers absently against her abdomen.

_ “You think frogs ever get scared?” _ Kara asks after a particularly long silence.

Lena doesn’t smile. “No.”

_ “You seem confident about that.” _

“Most amphibians have a simpler nervous system. They have the fight or flight instincts, can feel pain, but they don’t experience fear like we do.”

_ “But how would you actually know what they feel?” _

“They just... don’t. It’s a higher system response they aren’t capable of. Have you ever heard a frog scream?”

Kara exhales softly, and there’s a crinkling of movement before Lena can hear Kara’s breath much more clearly.

_ “What are you afraid of?” _

Lena wonders if she just means generally, if this is how she tries to pry themselves passed this meaningless, empty back and forth. Lena doesn’t let it either way.

“I suppose that I really am just like my mother.”

_ “You’re not.” _

“You don’t know Lillian.”

_ “I know you.” _

Lena doesn’t feel anything. “What are you afraid of?”

Kara doesn’t answer immediately. Lena would check to see if the call cut short if this weren’t so typical for them now.

_ “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. I’m not scared of anything anymore.” _

Anymore.

They don’t fight anymore, and Lena stops running, but somehow the silence is worse.

Lena rolls over onto her side. “Goodnight, Kara.”

_ “Night Lena.” _

xx

It’s the first week of December, and Lena doesn’t know if they’re getting anywhere. Maybe forgiveness is as quiet as the initial heartbreak, maybe it’s already happened and she’s simply too tired to see it.

Kara had asked if she wanted to come over. She’s been learning how to cook and recently nailed down an enchilada recipe, with her own sauce from scratch she informs, but Lena ended up at Gayle’s penthouse instead.

She texted Kara that she’s busy tonight. 

They’re sitting on the floor, lounged across a white shag carpet in front of Gayle’s fireplace lazily nursing their second round of martinis, and Gayle’s telling her about a party she went to last weekend with Minka Kelly on a yacht. Supposedly it ended with Jason Momoa trying to convince them both into a weekend getaway to Thailand.

Lena smirks. “Have I ever told you that you remind me of my ex?”

“The reporter?” 

“No, Siobhan. She was convinced for years that Taylor Swift was one of her best friends.”

Gayle just huffs indignantly. “Well, she was definitely lying, because I know all of Taylor’s friends.”

“Sure you do.”

Lena leans back against the frontside of the red leather couch, crossing her ankles as she takes a sip of her drink. When she looks back at Gayle, she finds the blonde watching her with narrowed eyes.

“You’re a lot mopey-er than usual.”

Lena quirks her brow, swirling the olive around her glass. “This is the third time we’ve seen each other in nearly four months. I’d hardly say you know me well enough to accurately speak on how I usually am.”

“And now you’re being defensive. What’s up?”

“Nothing.” 

“Seriously, are you not getting laid enough or something?”

She only rolls her eyes.

“Are you not getting laid at _ all?” _

Lena changes the subject. “I thought you wanted to go out for drinks, not braid each other’s hair and discuss our feelings.”

“You should know by now I love gossip above all else.” Gayle sets her own drink down on the brick tile to the side of the fireplace and hunches forward, sitting cross-legged on the carpet. “So what’s the deal? I thought you were seeing the barbie doll again, why is she not going down on you every night? Or is she bad at giving head?”

Lena tilts her head back tiredly so that it rests against the seat cushion behind her, closing her eyes. “Why am I friends with you?”

“Because I ask the necessary questions.”

Taking a long, tense breath, Lena sits back up. “Maybe this a bad idea, I don’t… maybe I should just go.”

But Gayle is quick to crawl over closer, all waving hands and rushed objections. “Stop, stop, okay, I’m sorry, I’m being a dick — just, look please don’t go.”

The hurried panic, dare Lena call it such, makes her wonder not for the first time if Gayle is constantly reminding Lena of her lack of personal relationships because she’s projecting her own insecurities. It would certainly explain her constant need to name-drop random B-List celebrities she’s never actually been publicly seen with. But perhaps that’s too psychoanalytical an assumption to make about someone she hardly knows.

Slowly, Lena settles back against the foot of the couch. 

“I’ve been talking about myself all night,” Gayle tries, a new approach. “Least you can do is throw me a bone.”

“Yes, but you love talking about yourself.”

“Not the point. Look, you just seem really tense is all, and I’m offering to lend an ear.”

Lena snorts. “Thank you, but honestly talking about my problems is the last thing I want to do right now.”

“So you admit you’re having problems?” Gayle grins, but at Lena’s exasperated groan, she quickly back-tracks again. “Okay, fine, forget the talking. How about this — when was the last time you took a vacation?”

Lena is already shaking her head before Gayle’s even finished her sentence. “No, we’re not doing this again, I absolutely do not have time to be going anywhere.”

“Oh come on,” Gayle presses, scooting closer again and giving Lena’s ankles a shake of encouragement. “You know you want to get out of here, we can have a sinfully fun time, and I have a thing next weekend anyway! It’s perfect.”

“You have a thing every weekend.”

“Yeah, but this one I really don’t want to go alone to.”

“And why are you going alone?”

“Oh, uh, my friend cancelled.”

“These friends of yours cancel a lot, don’t they?”

“Being a cunt isn’t going to make me lay off. It’s just a ski wedding, one weekend, and I’ll have you returned to your boring life by Sunday night.”

Lena grimaces. “What the hell is a ski wedding?”

“It’s a wedding on a ski slope, what else?” Sighing impatiently, Gayle comes even closer and plucks Lena’s drink out of her grip before clasping Lena’s hands in her own, and she gives Lena an uncomfortably insistent stare. “C’mon, it’s just a stupid thing up in Oregon and my dad’s making me go, they’re some old family friends and I’m supposed to sub in his place.”

“I don’t know,” Lena sighs apprehensively.

“Please don’t make me beg.” With another huff, Gayle sits up straight and waves dismissively. “Okay, listen, how about this — you’re obviously having _ some _ kind of personal crisis with your lady, so why don’t you bring Kara? It’ll help you loosen up and might actually get you some action. The whole resort is rented out, it’s a private event with a bunch of rich bitches, the three of us will have a blast.”

“For the last time, Kara and I aren’t dating.”

“Okay, hanging out in a gay way, same difference.”

Lena withdraws from Gayle’s touch, the casual affection causing a lump to form in her throat. Lena tiredly makes to her feet, leaving Gayle alone on the floor as Lena puts some space between them.

She’s not an idiot, she knows deep down this thing with Kara isn’t working anymore. Maybe it was hard on them both in the beginning, all the harsh fights and the difficult conversations, the crippling confessions, hashing up all these skeletons from the past, but at least before it was getting them somewhere. And Lena knows this is her own fault, the sudden void between them, how their conversations are stilted and empty like they’re trying to communicate across the divide of a canyon. She knows it was all going well up until Lena let Lillian get into her head and rattle her backbone. She knows that it was hard for them both, picking arguments with Kara until, bit by bit, the truth finally emerges, but she knows that the hollow apathy of nothing at all hurts even more.

She thought they were moving backwards, before, that the way this process was chipping away at their smiles seemed like the opposite of progress, and it’s not until they’ve come to this frozen standstill that Lena realizes that was exactly how healing is supposed to go. It’s supposed to hurt, it’s supposed to rip the breath from her lungs and smear her heart into the pavement. 

And they’re running out of time.

Like Lena promised, they did have enough time to get through the entire list by the end of the year. But the problem is that they have and it’s still not enough.

Well. Everything but one thing.

Lena turns back to where Gayle still sits cross-legged on the carpet, watching Lena with a poorly masked enthusiasm, god she even looks _ hopeful. _

She already knows she’s going to regret this.

“When do we leave?”

Gayle’s ensuing squeal of delight as she topples Lena back over the floor, knocking over both their drinks in the process, is almost as endearing as it is terrifying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everyone say thank u gayle
> 
> edit: i know i changed it again, and i know the promise i made, give me a sec


	20. i wanna feel like this forever, even if forever is just for now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in gayle we trust

The following Friday, Lena half considers that Lillian might actually be right.

She potentially has lost whatever sense of reason she had left when she came to National City. She’s clinging to straws of sanity at this point, and she realizes this about the time they’re just getting ready to board Gayle’s private jet.

The only way Lena was going to be able to make this weekend happen was if she brought some of her work with her. She suspects the only reason Lillian didn’t fly all the way out here and hand-feed Lena Xanax herself was this fact. They’re not going to the middle of nowhere, her wifi connection at the resort will probably be even better than it is in the hotel, and Lillian trusts that Lena hates the cold enough to make plenty use of her inside-time by a flickering fire for paperwork.

That, and the lingering tension between her and her mother is still palpable, hasn’t let up in the slightest since their argument about Kara nearly two months ago. Lillian stopped calling, they resorted to email updates only, and anytime there’s a time-sensitive message, her mother will route it through Lena’s assistant. The first time was a kick to her chest, Lena had stared at Jane for nearly thirty seconds in stunned silence before she stuffed the wound far back into the closet of her mind like dirty laundry she has no time to take care of, and carried on. So Lillian wants to be like that, alright — Lena can play along.

They haven’t spoken since.

Which is just fine.

So she CC'd her mother on an email to the board that she would be out of town this weekend but still within range, and they could contact her if need be, and she would be taking her work with her. She already spoke with Jack and filled him in on her weekend plans, outlining the reports she’ll have written up by Monday, to which he hung up on her with the begging insistence that she take a break. She asked Sam to join the trip herself, because honestly, the more people here to work as buffer and prevent her from either crushing whatever remains of Kara’s soul or simply just ruining her own, the better. But, of course, Ruby has a basketball game this weekend, and so. Gayle will just have to suffice. 

Everything is set into place, Lena’s running out of excuses to back out.

Except, you know, her dignity and all that.

Lena stands beside Kara on the tarmac now, the wind whipping both of their hair around in sharp lashes. They’ve hardly spoken a word since Lena picked her up from her apartment, having had her driver take her straight from L-Corp to Kara’s and then here. Aside from half an energy bar that Kara shared with her in the car, they’ve hardly even looked at each other.

She shifts her messenger back to her opposite shoulder with a quiet _ hmph, _ the strap digging into her tendons, and Kara notices immediately. 

“Do you want me to carry that?” Kara asks, breaking their forty-two minute long streak of silence and gesturing to the bag. 

It’s not even heavy, it just has her laptop and is stuffed to the brim with CVs Lena needs to go over, and so it’s only lopsided, hence the discomfort, but.

“No.” Lena swallows, still looking back up at the low, sleek luxury jet before them. “Thank you.”

“You can carry mine,” a glib voice from behind them greets, and before they’ve both even fully turned around, Gayle is already tossing a fat leather duffel bag into Kara’s arms, and the bartender stumbles as she grapples for it.

Gayle gives Kara a sickly sweet smile, patting her on the shoulder, before she up to Lena and leans in to press a kiss to her cheek, one dangerously close to her mouth. “Hi baby, glad you could make it.”

It must be emphasized that Lena does hate this side of Gayle, it’s irritating and positively only done for attention, to elicit a response. Lena _ is _ annoyed about this, really, of course she is. Gayle is being a brat on purpose to get a rise out of her, and it’s working, but the worst part is the blush that creeps up Lena’s neck and the momentary inability to respond with anything but a weak, stuttering: “Um, yes, no, me too. Us too. Thank you.”

She doesn’t even have any romantic interest in Gayle, so how she even _ does _ that will forever disturb her.

Kara eyes the two of them apprehensively, and Gayle simply beams. 

This really is her last chance to jump ship, and the very fact that she doesn’t is exactly what prompts Lena to come to the conclusion that she _ has _ lost her fucking mind.

But Lena just remains stiff-jawed and tense as they pass over onto the small jet, she remains stubbornly mute while she takes the seat beside Kara — if only because anywhere else would leave Gayle the opportunity to sit next to her, and Lena is not going to let her off easy for the stupid _ baby _ — and Lena is already pulling out her laptop from her bag when the staircase is retracting into the aircraft and the door seals shut. 

Despite how used to it Lena is by now, the quiet is still sticky and awkward. She can feel the antsy stares of both blondes watching her like they’re waiting for her to be the one who alleviates them. It’s one thing for it to be just Kara and Lena trudging through whatever divide that separates them, but it’s another to have Gayle as a spectator, like she’s peeking in on an intimate secret, on an embarrassing imperfection.

They make it fourteen minutes into the flight before Gayle breaks, crossing her legs. 

“Well. This is nice.”

But Kara’s relieved at the offer for anything to interrupt this silence, however sarcastic, and she sits forward. “So how did you guys meet?”

Gayle’s smirk is perverse. “Oh, we used to date.”

“We didn’t,” Lena sharply interjects, shooting the heiress a glare.

“Okay, one date.”

“We didn’t date at all. Lillian hired her for the award ceremony.” Lena addresses Kara now, who looks equally terrified and amused at being caught in the middle of whatever this spat is. 

“Hey, I told you I’m not an escort.”

“No, you’re just a petty thief.”

“Is she always this much of a bitch with you?” Gayle slumps back into the white leather exasperatedly, lolling her head across her shoulders to look at Kara. “I swear it’s her default setting.”

Lena just buries her nose back into her reviews, but when Kara lets out a quiet laugh beside her, she sneaks another glance.

“I wouldn’t say she’s a bitch, but she’s usually in a pretty testy mood, yeah.” Kara’s smiling, not even meeting Lena’s narrowed eyes, and so help her _ god _Lena thinks her and Gayle are about to share a moment. “She’s a lot nicer if you give her something to eat.”

“That’s not true,” Lena objects hotly.

They both ignore her.

“I don’t know about food, but there’s a shitload of champagne stocked up in here. Is she a nicer drunk?”

Kara hums. “Hit or miss, honestly. Could go either way.”

“I’ll take the risk if you will.”

“Sure.”

Gayle rises for the small wine cooler at the front of the beige, spacious cabin, and she tosses a glance at Kara over her shoulder. “You want one too?”

“Ah, yeah, why not. Thanks.” While Gayle sets to pouring them each a glass, Kara turns back to Lena with a grin, lowering her voice. “I like her.”

Lena scoffs. “Yes, well I don’t like either of you, so.”

Kara’s eyes just crinkle cutely with her grin, and Lena worries that this might actually be a nightmare, but it has absolutely nothing to do with how this is the first genuine smile she’s seen on Kara’s face in weeks.

It’s easily the shortest distance Lena’s ever travelled by plane, because really they could have taken a four-hour train and been there by just as reasonable a time, but it was no surprise to anyone when Gayle informed them it’s been thirteen years since she last used any form of public transportation.

And yet it is still the longest flight of Lena’s life.

xx

Lena’s never been to Oregon.

And, okay, she knew this weekend would be at a ski resort, so of course she was prepared for snow. It’s December, so there's _ real _ snow at that. National City doesn’t get much colder than some sharply brisk nights, but Lena’s from Metropolis, she’s trudged through snow before. She understands slushy roads and traffic delays from the couple-inch snowfalls that happen pretty regularly throughout the winter. She owns an Everlane puffer jacket because the wind in the east-coast city can be brutal, one she’s had since MIT when she met Siobhan — the point is she’s not an amateur with the cold.

But it apparently doesn’t mean that Lena’s prepared for the near-zero temperatures of an icy mountainside with nine inches of fresh snow gathered in the last ten hours alone. It’s already dark by the time they arrive at the Timberline Lodge, just a bit after six, and whatever blessing of warmth the winter sun would have provided during the day is long gone. 

There’s a car already waiting for them when Gayle’s jet lands at the nearest roadside runway at the base of the mountain, and the driver takes them swiftly up to the ski resort. But even the parking lot they’re dropped off in directly in front of the hotel entrance is slippery and freezing, there’s no sight of any pavement or ground untouched by the snow. The resort is carved into the high side of the mountain, its own scoop of civilization with nothing but ice, road-salt, and snow-capped trees surrounding them.

She’s already dreaming of the hot bath she’ll treat herself to once she’s alone.

Gayle and Kara, on the other hand, have decided they’re the best of friends, messing through the outskirts of the parking lot in the large, plowed-aside mounds of snow, chucking crudely-shaped snowballs at each other. While they continue to fool around and drench their jeans and coats in the absolutely freezing conditions, Lena remains on the edge of the parking lot, watching them with crossed arms and hunched shoulders as she tries to bury herself in her own jacket and just about go inside without them.

“Don’t be such a princess,” Gayle laughs as the hotel staff begin carting their belongings inside the lodge, noting Lena’s scowl and crossed arms. 

“I’m not being a _ princess. _It’s negative three fucking degrees and you two are acting like children.”

“It’s not that bad if you have gloves.” Kara shakes her hair from her eyes, her cheeks a brilliant blush of pink from the cold even under the yellow flood lights illuminating the grounds. Lena can’t remember the last time Kara had actually looked at her with such unadulterated glee, her laughter so unweighted. Her eyebrows spike up as she lights up with an idea. “Hey, you want me to make you a snow cone? I bet there’s some sugar packets inside.”

Ignoring Kara, Lena looks to Gayle again. “Since when are you such a fan of the cold? You are quite literally one of the stuffiest people I’ve ever met.”

“Sweetie.” Gayle levels her with a patronizing smirk, her leather-gloved hands molding another snowball. “I’m from the northern peak of Israel, I was basically born in an igloo. You better get used to this, you know, we’re going to spend most the weekend outside.”

“Oh, over my dead body.” Lena gives up on them with a huff, tugging her jacket more tightly around her midsection as she turns to head inside. 

From her peripheral, she sees Kara immediately drop her own armful snowballs and begin brushing herself off, clambering off the snowbanks to meet Lena halfway to the entrance.

“Yo, what gives? Where are you going?” Gayle calls after Kara.

Lena stifles her smug smile when Kara shrugs indifferently, waving to Lena. “I go where she goes.”

As it’s been established, her and Kara are on good terms. Fine. They haven’t been fighting, they’re usually on the same page. They can always agree on what cuisine to eat or which movie to watch, they have this natural rhythm by now. Even if they spend more time looking anywhere but at each other when they’re in the same room, they’re still fine.

It’s all just fine, in that regard.

So it’s not completely the end of the world when the concierge says that the reservation Gayle booked them under is for one room. It’s not a big deal, and considering they’re not even actual friends of the bride and groom nor are they paying for most the commodities of their stay, it makes sense that they wouldn’t both get their own private room. It’s sensible. Sure, the whole lodge is rented out for the event, but the amount of space is still finite.

Lena doesn’t think much of how Gayle is suddenly nowhere to be found in the lobby while she speaks with the front desk. Kara lingers at her side, leaned against the counter beside her as she lazily regards the rustic, dark-stained wooden architecture with appreciative eyes. Lena is simply too busy fantasizing about the hot bath she can take before crashing in for an early night to pay Gayle’s convenient disappearance much mind.

But when she pushes into a room with Kara trailing along closely behind her to find it has only one bed?

Yeah, no, Lena has a _ lot _ on her mind.

Kara’s shift to damage-control is automatic, she’s already jumping on defusing Lena’s meltdown before she’s even reacted to the situation herself. All it takes is one glance at the cold downturn of Lena’s mouth and the icy narrow of her eyes and Kara is already waving her hands and coming up beside Lena, rubbing her arm appeasingly.

“Hey, it’s cool, it’s probably just a mix-up.” She squeezes her elbow. “I’ll go fix it, yeah? They must have just given us the wrong room.”

Lena doesn’t so much as move until Kara returns thirteen minutes later.

“Right, so…” Kara sucks in a sharp inhale, scratching the back of her head. “There’s nothing else available. Unless one of us wants to sleep in the Silcox Hut.”

“Okay. And what is that?”

“It’s one of their accommodations on the back of the property… it’s available.”

“Great.” Lena moves to grab her suitcase. “I’ll go there then.”

“Um, yeah, the thing is that it has no walls.”

She stops, slowly looks back at Kara. “What do you mean it has no walls?”

“It’s for the summer. She said if we like camping we’re more than welcome to try it, but now that I think about it, she had to have been joking.” Kara’s eyebrows knit together cutely, but Lena has no mental capacity right now to be focusing on the pout of her pink lips.

Lena sets herself on the bed’s edge, staring blankly at the wall. “This is worse than the elevator.”

“Oh!” Kara snaps her fingers at Lena. “That’s what this reminds me of! This is totally another rom-com thing.”

“Wonderful.” She rubs at her right temple, mentally configuring how far away the next nearest hotel might be. “And how is this one usually resolved? Do we discuss our childhood traumas, or braid each other’s hair?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Kara drops down on the bed beside her, causing it to bounce beneath Lena. “They usually end up just sleeping together, I think.”

“Oh my god,” Lena groans, her face falling into her hands.

“I meant _ sleeping. _ No offense, but you’re kinda being dramatic. You already know I’m a great roommate.”

“Is this funny to you?” 

“Like, yeah, but the funny part is mostly just how mad you are.”

Lena shakes her head, town between an incredulous laugh and an indignant scoff. “You are honestly such a brat sometimes.”

“Nope.” Kara gives her a cheeky smile. “That’s your thing.”

“I’m calling the front desk and having a cot brought up.” 

Kara rolls her eyes, leaning back and bracing her arms behind her. “Yeah, I figured. I already told them downstairs.”

Lena, on her feet and phone in hand, sheepishly sets it back on the receiver.

Kara gives her an amused, pointed look, but her tone softens. “Seriously, we don’t need to make this into a big thing, I’ll just take the spare bed. It’s not any different from what we’ve already done before.”

Lena refrains from pointing out that they used to sleep in the same bed before.

“Besides.” Kara waves around the room. “You said we’re here to relax, that we needed the break. We’ve been here for five minutes and you’re already letting the negatives mess it up for you. You haven’t even bothered to notice how awesome this room is.”

Pursing her lips, Lena lets her gaze wander and, okay. Kara has a point. The room is incredibly spacious, a wide open layout with crisp, clean carpets over the dark floors. Even if they did share the bed, it likely wouldn’t matter either way because it’s a luxurious king-sized spread, a valley of silky white wool and enormous, plush pillows. A small narrow couch sits underneath the far window, the faded orange of the cushioned bench a warm complement to the wide-plank oak walls, stained a rich black cherry. The true headliner of the room, however, is the unlit fireplace set in a dark slate tile with a small stack of logs and kindling in a crate beside it. The entire room smells like a sweet, earthy breath of nature, subtle overlaps of cedar and sandalwood making this feel less like a commercial hotel room and more the private space cut out specifically for them, just them.

The coil of irritated panic begins to deflate, and Lena’s shoulders sag as her gaze lands back on Kara, who has her eyebrows raised like she could wait all night for Lena to get over herself.

The sad part is Lena knows she would.

“I’m sorry, you’re right.” Lena sits back down with a sigh and angles herself to the blonde, tucking a foot beneath her. “I don’t mean to ruin this for you.”

The bed dips again and Kara’s voice is suddenly much closer, and when Lena looks up she sees that Kara’s crawled back around to her side, trying to catch Lena’s eye with a soft smile.

“You’re not ruining anything.”

She laughs dryly. “I’m not making it any more enjoyable either.”

“It’s okay, really. I just want you to have a good time, too. Is, um… is something wrong?”

This is the most they’ve spoken in weeks, and this transition strays the deepest their conversations have reached — it’s always polite, empty small talk, monotonous goodbyes and faint greetings. Something about the change of scenery seems to make Kara bolder, makes Lena just that much more inclined to not shut her down entirely. 

“No, everything is fine. With you, at least.” Lena pulls down at her sleeves, swallowing back her urge to change the topic as she avoids Kara’s gaze. “I just… I haven’t exactly finished taking care of the transition of management for next year.”

Kara’s breath falls in a short, low exhale. “Oh.”

“It’s not a particularly huge position to fill,” Lena goes on, lifting her head but pointedly looking around the room. “I’ve gotten the main launch off the ground with Jack and established a strong foundation of staff and investors here, so, I just need a pair of eyes to oversee and organize the groundwork, follow the plan. I can still run administration from Metropolis and return to the rest of my work there.”

“So… what’s wrong, then?” Kara’s voice is so quiet, and with them being so far from the city in the middle of a fortress of ice and snow, the stillness is almost overwhelming.

If Lena were to try and explain why her throat is suddenly dry or her stomach is turning in on itself, Kara wouldn’t understand.

“I’ve prepped Jack for the change. I’ve been documenting everything I do, kept detailed reports on everyone who works for us, all my notes on the upcoming line of tech we’ll be frontlining with next year. I put together a committee that will run that new mental health project I started a couple of months ago. They just have to confer with me through the process, but they have a handle on preparing to go public on social media by the spring. So I just… I need to choose someone, I’ve been doing interviews and taking referrals from other employers, taking recommendations, I’m doing everything I should be.”

“But?”

“But… no one seems quite right for it.” She finally looks back to Kara, to the persistent, open attention hanging onto Lena’s every word. Kara’s pale eyes, blue like the glean of the snow outside, are as warm as the heat of daylight. 

“This organization is everything to me,” Lena confesses. “No, it’s not a big role, but it’s the first time I’ll be handing over the reins to someone else.”

Kara tilts her head with a tender smile, the curtain of her creamy hair fluttering, and it’s when the waft of honey-sweet vanilla drifts between them that Lena realizes now how closely together they sit, their legs just barely touching, a touch of champagne still on Kara’s breath.

She wonders how long ago Kara changed her shampoo.

“There’s nothing wrong with having high standards.” Kara’s smile splays down into a smirk. “You’re crazy tough to impress, but if they’re good enough, then they’ll find a way to measure up.”

“That’s sweet, but if I don’t hire someone within the next week then I can kiss goodbye any chance I have of leaving by the new year.”

Kara doesn’t laugh, but Lena’s not sure if it was a joke anyway.

The settle of their eyes together, Lena sees far deeper inside Kara than she has in years, so much so that she wonders if it was ever about how she never bothered to look in the first place, but instead maybe Kara had always kept something intimate guarded close to her chest. She can’t explain why Kara’s opinion matters, why her input on how Lena should make this decision is relevant, it’s not like Kara’s a business mogul herself, but the foresight of her unbreakable mind seems priceless for a choice like this.

“What would you—”

A knock at the door interrupts her question, and with a sigh that sounds almost disappointed, Kara rises for it, leaving Lena alone on the bed with cold fingers and the choke of words slipping back down her throat.

“Oh hey beautiful,” a quiet, low voice drawls to Kara, and Lena makes no effort to hide her groan. “How’s the room treating you guys? Have everything you need?”

“It’s great, thanks.” There’s a hollow clip to Kara’s tone, hardly noticeable through her friendly demeanor, but Lena hears its edge.

Gayle’s head pokes over Kara’s shoulder, coming into Lena’s line of sight, and their eyes meet. “Oh damn, only one bed? That’s a shame, sorry about that.”

She sounds anything but, and Lena narrows her eyes.

“Anyway.” Gayle claps her hands, passing by Kara into the room with a pleased grin. “Both of you get dressed, we’re going out.”

Lena doesn’t hesitate. “No, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Where are we going?” Kara asks

“The big bachelorette party’s tonight, duh.” Gayle comes up to Lena and nudges her knee. “C’mon, get up, we have to pay our respects or whatever.”

Lena swats her away. “You pay respects at a funeral. And I highly doubt we’re invited, I don’t even know whose wedding this is.”

“I do.” Gayle shrugs. “It’s Meghan, our parents used to play golf together.”

“Meghan and…?

“I don’t know, some dude.”

“You don’t remember the groom’s name?” Kara interjects with a grin, leaning back against the wall by the door.

“Baby, I haven’t remembered a man’s name since 2012. And it’s not private, it’s an open party for all the guests, bitch likes her attention. Now let’s go.” She grabs at Lena’s hands this time, hauling Lena to her feet with a terrifyingly impressive display of strength. “There’s an open bar, and you _ know _ how I feel about open bars.”

“Yes, I do actually.” Lena fusses out of Gayle’s surprising grip with a slight stumble, and Kara immediately is at her side with a supporting weight to her elbow. Lena’s less automatic to push her away, she lets her steady her before she steps away into her own space with a flustered sigh. 

“You feel entitled to everything they have to offer and ask to speak to the manager when you don’t get your way,” she continues. “Do I have to remind you of how you two met?”

“Did you try and talk to my boss?” Kara asks bemusedly, no sign of affront. 

“No, she’s exaggerating.”

“Oh please. You were about ready to have her fired.” And then to Kara, Lena laughs. “You telling her off was honestly the highlight of my night, so thank you for that.”

Gayle frowns. “You said I was the highlight of your night.”

“That is just factually not true.”

“Okay,” Kara interrupts again, coming to stand between the two of them. “What is this party exactly?”

Gayle’s grin is far more treacherous than any Luthor bite.

xx

“I’m not doing this.” Lena shakes her head finitely, prodding at Kara’s side to urge her out of the way. “Let me out, I have work to do.”

“Don’t you dare move,” Gayle threatens Kara as she sets down a round of drinks on the table and slides into the booth across from them. 

“Kara, get out of my way.”

“Be strong Danvers, hold your ground.”

Kara looks back and forth between the two of them with pursed lips, the cogs churning in her eyes, and when her jaw sets with her decision, Lena already knows she’s lost. 

She leans in to Lena, dropping her voice to a soft tone, Lena can feel the pads of her breath. “Let’s just stay for a few drinks. You literally just said that you've been really stressed, so I’m enforcing a break.”

Lena scowls. “I’m never confiding in you with anything ever again.”

“Drink up.” Gayle pushes two shot glasses over with a wickedly pleased smile. “We gotta catch up with everyone else.”

“You don’t even know anyone here,” Lena points out glumly, waving to the room around them. “No one has so much as said two words to us since coming in.”

The party is hosted in the resort’s main bar, The Ram’s Head, just a short trek down the mountainside down an outdoor cement stairway. The entrance splays open to a round room, a second-floor circular balcony that surrounds a massive stone chimney, a litter of oak tables around and lines of booths on the north and south walls. The bar itself is located on the west side against a large floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the parking lot and the shadowy distance of mountain ranges, only dark, blurry silhouettes this late at night. The terrace is filled with more wedding guests than any of them could count, as full as Lena imagines the regular bar would usually be, and Lena can’t imagine even _ knowing _ this many people. The tavern is decked out with the typical bachelorette paraphernalia, rose-gold balloons tied to every nook and railing they can, bowls of inappropriately shaped candies on every table, strips of gold and silver streamers and ribbons draped all the way across and above their heads in a dizzying criss-cross to give the impression of a twinkling sky. White and pink rose petals rain all up and down the wooden pillars along the room’s peripheral, are wrapped in twists around every table leg and bar stool. It’s like someone spent all afternoon vomiting the colors of love and celebration to decorate.

The decorations are the least of Lena’s concerns — sure, it’s a lot of Aphrodite colors, and maybe it’s borderline obnoxious, but she’s not one to judge how a happy woman celebrates one of the best weekends of her life. Lena is just grateful this woman couldn’t care less who people bring to her wedding, the bridge is just happy to ply anyone who’s here to support her with as much food and drink as they’d like.

No, Lena’s discomfort is with the near-naked, muscular men catering around the room, wearing only pink hot bow ties and matching banana thongs.

“I told you, I know Meghan.” Gayle tuts flippantly, sweeping her hair back behind her shoulder as she plucks up her own shot glass. “Come on, cheers, ladies.”

Kara follows, and when Lena makes no move to touch her own, Kara nudges her elbow and Lena just rolls her eyes.

“Fine, you know what? If I get drunk enough, then maybe I’ll be graced with forgetting this night ever happened.” 

Lena doesn’t wait for them before throwing her own shot back, and the arctic sear of the clear liquor down her throat is strangely sobering, a brief breath of fresh air from her mind-consuming gloom.

Gayle and Kara quickly take their own and they both smack their glasses down at the same time.

Despite the slight relief, Lena still grimaces. “Do you ever drink anything other than vodka?”

Gayle ignores her and looks to Kara, unphased by the shot entirely. “Seriously, what will it take for her to have fun? Do I have to take her fucking skydiving? Because I can make that happen.”

Kara laughs, her cheeks already touched with a pretty pink around her smile. “She’s scared of heights, so probably not.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Sure.” Kara’s touch on her knee under the table is as brief as it is platonic, but it makes what little alcohol drips down Lena’s system burn hotter all the same. 

Kara turns back to Gayle. “She is actually having fun though, don’t worry.”

Lena scoffs. “This is the opposite of fun for me, thanks.”

“She just refuses to admit it.” Kara props her elbow up on the wooden ledge behind them, not quite draping her arm around Lena but close enough that Lena can’t help but notice, wonders if she only imagines the warmth she feels radiating from her. “Pretty sure she’s allergic to showing any kind of affection to her friends, but trust me, after another couple drinks? She won’t be able to hide it.”

“Will you stop it?” Lena hisses, now sporting a blush of her own, but Gayle just cackles with glee.

“Okay, perfect, because more drinks I can absolutely do.”

Once Gayle has ducked back out of the booth and is off for the bar, Lena slouches with a petulant frown, and Kara angles herself into the booth to face Lena better. 

“You don’t know me as well as you think you do, you know.” 

It echoes something Lena had said months ago, after a petty fight over Lillian. And perhaps it’s because Lena says it with no malice, instead more like how a small child whines at being proven wrong, but Kara’s grin only widens, and they’ve reached a remarkably different side of that coin now. 

“Sure I don’t.”

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

_ “That. _” Lena points to Kara’s tongue-in-cheek smirk. “Agreeing with me just to make me shut up, like you know something I don’t.”

Kara just tilts her head cutely. “I would never want you to shut up.”

Before Lena can answer, a figure approaches the table. “Excuse me, ladies.” 

They both look up to see one of the male strippers — are they strippers if their clothes are already off? — smiling at them with sinfully white teeth, and offering out a bottle of champagne.

“May I interest either of you in a glass?”

It has absolutely nothing to do with how his eyes linger a moment too long on the open-buttons of Kara’s flannel that Lena promptly reaches into her purse and is pulling out a bill before Kara can so much as get a word in.

“I will pay you a hundred dollars to not come anywhere near this table for the rest of the night.”

Kara is still laughing when Gayle returns five minutes later with their next round of drinks, this time with three pale pink martinis. 

“I brought cosmos!” Gayle sings as she sets them onto the table, her grin bursting from ear to ear.

“Oh my god, enough with the _ fucking _ vodka,” Lena moans, and this only prompts Kara to laugh harder.

xx

Okay, unfortunately, Kara is right. Lena’s starting to realize that might be a regular thing.

So help her god, Lena has fun. Like actually, truly, miraculously, she _ enjoys _ herself. She eases her mind off the suffocating stress of work and her mother without guilt, and however much she wishes that she could give credit to all the cosmopolitans in her bloodstream, the overwhelming factor is the company.

Gayle and Kara represent polar opposite aspects of her life, their personalities and entire upbringings on paper could not be any more different. For all intents and purposes, Lena should be the one struggling to keep them entertained, playing the middle-man and trying to find common ground in their interests so that they get along.

It’s as infuriating as it is endearing that they sincerely like each other far more than Lena could have expected.

Sure, it’s one thing for them to band together and see how far they can go in pushing Lena’s buttons, or on the complete other end of the totem instead to conspire on how they might pry thrill from Lena’s jaw like pulling teeth out of her mouth. 

It’s another for Gayle to kick Lena out of her seat so she can sit next to Kara while the two of them discuss some of Kara’s cringiest stories of her time at Roulette. At first, Kara hesitates, she bites the inside of her cheek with an adorable scrunch of her lips.

“I know I don’t work there anymore, but I did technically sign an NDA that still stands,” she explains. “I’m not allowed to talk about anything that’s happened in Roulette with anyone who hasn’t been there themselves. I’ve sort of gotten into trouble with that before.”

This, Lena didn’t know. “You have?”

But Gayle waves her off. “I’ve been there, don’t worry.”

“No you haven’t.”

“Stuff it, Luthor.” Gayle dips her fingers into the surface of her cocktail and flicks the spray at Lena before turning back to Kara promptly. “I have. Please continue.”

It’s either a tribute to how Kara trusts Lena’s judgement in friends, or she really is just indifferent enough to not worry about the old contract, because she laughs amiably and appeases Gayle’s curiosities. Kara launches out with a plethora of embarrassing tales about notable names who have done various ridiculous things in Roulette over the years. Lena isn’t completely sure if she believes all the names Kara drops, with an overwhelming inventory of incidents involving public indecency. It’s either someone who was caught receiving a blowjob on the dance floor, someone too drunk to know their surroundings that they took a leak on the bar floor, or they’re stories on a completely different tier of horrifying — like, a certain actor who once ate nearly half a jar of pickled eggs and ended up staying in the bathroom for two hours. They’re mostly rather repulsive stories, involving some bodily fluid or another, and Gayle always shrieks with disgust, slapping at Kara’s chest and arms for her to stop and shut up, before quickly egging her on again to tell another. She does tell one story about a well-known millionaire from Florida who tried numerous times to have Kara run away with him so he could be her “sugar daddy” — a term that Kara is yet to explain to Lena — and Gayle continues to squeal on with laughter.

Kara censors out the names for the more ridiculous ones out of respect, no matter how much Gayle protests, but she still feeds the heiress with a generous rap of stories to keep her satisfied.

Needless to say, they get along. Gayle has three great loves in her life — money, alcohol, and big names. Lena can see the adoration gloss over her eyes, can pinpoint the exact moment that Gayle mentally decides Kara is her new best friend.

If anything, Lena has to fight for any attention at all with how absorbed in each other the two of them get. It’s not like Lena minds, it’s more amusing than anything to watch Gayle’s chaotic, endless stream of dry-witted energy intermingle with Kara’s laid-back, addictively flattering charm. Lena knows what it’s like to first meet Kara, to be on the receiving end of that jovial smile and endless stock of jokes, to be the one drawing out such a sun-drenched, euphoric laugh. She gets it, intimately.

So, Gayle adores Kara, and Lena has a nagging, low dread, a suspicion that it’s been a while since Kara felt adored. 

And — maybe it should be said, it’s not a jealous thing. Lena’s not jealous, that’s ridiculous and not even necessary to clarify, because she has no reason to be, and even if she did, well, no, Lena wouldn’t give a shit. And Lena knows for a fact that Gayle has a strict policy of who she would ever sleep with, and it’s a near perfect correlation with the weight of their credit card. Lena would maybe go on to say that Gayle doesn’t quite seem Kara’s type either, but, licking her lips, Lena realizes she can’t really think of anyone else Kara has ever been interested in romantically. 

There has never been any mention of an ex or even a crush, from Kara or her friends, and Lena remembers now how long it took for her to even come to the conclusion that Kara was interested in women — and, to be fair, Lena was still not positively certain about this until their first kiss.

Last kiss. Only kiss. It was just one night. Whatever.

“These are actually quite delicious,” Lena hums, licking the smear of lime juice in the rim of her martini glass before she takes another sip. 

Gayle wags a sloppy finger at her. “I told you, you just gotta let her work her magic.” Turning back to Kara, she blinks her eyes quickly like she is struggling to keep them focused. “Okay, hold on, I’ma get us some more shots, because I need you to show me that again.”

Kara has just finished demonstrating her one and only party trick for Gayle, where she stands up and balances a small shot glass on her nose like a walrus and knocks its contents forward into her mouth before catching the glass. It had been something of a small performance, the tables of women around them also noticing and applauding Kara for her two renditions — at Gayle’s request — and Kara now settles back into the booth, wiping her mouth with a grimace, already shaking her head at Gayle.

“Nope, no more.” Kara shivers. “That used to be a lot easier to do with water.”

“Oh, c’mon.” Gayle tugs on the sleeve of Kara’s flannel. “I know I can nail it down if you show me again.”

But Kara just laughs. “Maybe so, but I think you’re probably done for the night, too.”

“What?” Gayle scoffs as she waves incredulously to Lena. “What about her? Boozy’s just been slurping down those things all night like apple juice and smiling at nothing, why don’t you cut her off?”

“I wanna see you try and tell Lena what to do, see how well that goes for you.”

Lena goes to object, because she is not that drunk thank you very much, but when she opens her mouth, only a sharp hiccup emerges, so instead of answering, she finds herself swept over with an influx of giggles. Kara and Gayle both watch her with comically identical raised eyebrows, and Gayle makes a flippant gesture again like Lena’s laughter proves her point, but then she begins to laugh herself, and Kara is left with just a couple of rather drunk, giggling millionaires.

“I don’t know about shots,” Lena says once she’s calmed herself, not slurring her words in the slightest. “But I will absolutely have another cosmo.”

Kara only smiles, sweet and endeared, as she shakes her head. “Yeah, okay, maybe we’re all done.”

Gayle boos loudly, blatant with her disapproval, but Lena finds herself content enough to be agreeable to just about anything. An adventure does sound like more fun than laughing and sharing stories around a table in a loud bar, so she staggers to her feet quickly when Kara urges them on. Gayle takes some coaxing, all colorful swears and petulant grumbling, but very soon Kara’s gotten her out of the booth as well. Kara first tries to help the other blonde with her coat, but Gayle just swats Kara off a frown, claiming they are no longer friends. 

Kara seems to take this harsh blow in noble stride, Lena notices with profound admiration.

Lena happily lets Kara help her with her coat, and it’s not because she chases herself around in a circle once or twice trying to jam her arm in the other sleeve, no, Lena is just nice and polite like that. 

It’s not a long walk back to the lodge from the bar, but it’s a furiously windy and slippery one along a cement pathway cutting through the property and up a narrow, salted staircase. The brisk weather is sobering itself, enough so for Lena to realize how drunk she actually is as well as center herself properly for the trek. Kara seems determined to keep herself planted between the two of them, but once she catches on that Lena can handle her balance much better than Gayle — who the weather seems to have an opposite, more intoxicating effect on — Kara turns her attention to the other blonde, directing most of her focus on ensuring Gayle doesn’t fall and crack her skull at the rocky bottom of the slope as they make up the stairs.

“Why they couldn’t find a better place to host a party I’ll never get,” Kara grumbles as she hoists an arm firmly around Gayle’s waist after the woman has slipped for the second time, head ducked low from the harsh wind. “You drunk dummies would have better luck on an acrobat course than this trail.”

Gayle laughs far louder than the joke warrants, having apparently forgotten about how she’s supposed to be mad at Kara and now content to allow herself half-carried up the hill.

“Kara, you are _ so _ funny,” the blonde coos, swiping a hand sloppily across Kara’s cheek.

Kara shoots Lena an amused look over her shoulder. “Thanks.”

“No, really, I mean it. I could just laugh with you like… forever.” 

While Gayle continues to shower Kara with fruitless compliments, they eventually make it to the top of the staircase, and the path opens up to a much wider, flatter walkway, a straight shot along the edge of the parking lot and up to the amber lights of the lodge, and so Lena falls back into step with the two of them. She catches the syrupy smile on Gayle’s face, her dreamy eyes, and the eager albeit very intoxicated trail of her gaze down Kara’s form.

She might have to re-think her earlier assessment on Gayle’s type, and suddenly this is all much less fun than it was before.

“Listen.” Gayle leans most of her weight into what Lena imagines is Kara’s very warm embrace. “I know you’re technically taken and all, but you can totally stay with me tonight if you want.”

Kara seems to pick up on the flirting as well — not that it wouldn’t be easily seen from the bottom of the fucking mountain — because she lets out a nervous laugh as they climb up the steps into the lobby.

“I’m not taken,” Kara corrects, and all the shots are beginning to feel like a mistake, curdling like miserable nausea. “But how about I just take you back to your room?”

“Oh, you can take me to bed any day you like.” 

Lena can’t quite see Gayle’s face anymore with Kara between them, but she hears how her tone drips with a want that Lena remembers far too clearly. 

“Ha, no, uh, not like that, just — um, what room are you staying in?”

Now safely inside, they’re coming up to an impasse as Gayle is pointing up one staircase to the left of the lobby, informing Kara that her room is up on the west wing, and Lena is hovering at the base of the route towards the right end that leads up to her and Kara’s room.

Vodka’s always been the kind of thing that tastes far better when it’s fresh, not when it stews somewhere low and cold in an unforgiving gut. 

“Right.” Lena swallows thickly, points to the stairs behind her. “I’ll just, um. I’ll see you…?”

She doesn’t mean to pose it as a question, it’s none of her business, frankly Kara can do whatever she likes, and Lena might be drunker than she anticipated being tonight, but she knows this is an answer she’d rather not know anyway.

Kara stumbles slightly as Gayle tries to turn them both around again, with her arm slung around Kara’s neck, and her brow sinks into a low, heavy frown once the implication of Lena’s words register.

“What? You’re leaving me alone to deal with her?”

Gayle smacks Kara on the shoulder with a hiss. “Shush it, she can’t know I’m flirting with you.”

“Would you quit that?” Kara huffs before looking at Lena again. “Just come with me, please? I don’t want you wandering alone, either.”

Things are not adding up, Lena remembers being so much better at math than this.

She gives the girl in Kara’s arms a rather pointed look, and Kara rolls her eyes.

“Oh my god, I’m not sleeping with Gayle,” she announces with an annoyed finality, addressing the ugly elephant in the room Gayle and Lena have been inching around like children. “Now come help me get her up the stairs, and then we’ll go to bed, okay?”

Gayle spends most the way back stubbornly grumbling that Kara’s full of shit and she never suggested anything sexual of the sorts, and Lena finds her light mood returning in a much easier swing, a loftier bounce to her step.

They don’t linger long in Gayle’s room, Kara just deposits her on the bed and helps her out of her shoes, leaves a glass of water on the nightstand before they leave, and Gayle is snoring before they’ve even closed the door. Kara is gentle with the large oak door, lets it latch softly behind her, while Lena waits patiently in the hall, rocking on her heels with far too pleased a smile. Kara nods down opposite the way they came and they fall back into step once more.

Arms swinging playfully at her side, Lena hums. “Thank you, by the way.”

“For what?”

Her small smile splits into a mocking grin. “For being just _ so _ chivalrous and walking me home.” Kara’s already shaking her head with a sheepish laugh, but Lena plows on with the same tone. “It is just so sweet of you to make sure I get in safe, how would I _ ever _ have found my way without you?”

“Okay, yeah, fine, laugh it up. But next time I’m just gonna let you deal with her yourself.”

They round a corner of the hallway, and Lena bites her lip. “Next time?”

Kara looks at her with eyes tired like moonlight, like how its surface will always reflect someone else’s sunshine.

“Think the cosmos are getting to your head,” is Kara’s evasive answer instead.

Lena wrinkles her nose. “Wait, wait, why aren’t you drunk? We had the same number of drinks. Are you an alien?”

Kara laughs, but it’s half-hearted, hollow. “I’m not drunk because you drank most of mine.”

“Oh.”

Once they make it back to the room and the eerie clouds of distance still haven’t parted from Kara’s eyes, Lena drops the teasing tone, turning around as Kara shuts the door. “But truly, thank you. For taking care of her, that was really sweet of you.”

Kara shrugs, unbuttoning her coat. “It was nothing.”

“No, it’s something.” Lena drops onto the edge of the white duvet, flopping onto her back tiredly. “Take my word for it, most people are far too self-centered to stop and pay attention to anyone around them.”

Kara chuckles wryly just as Lena feels the zipper of her boots being pulled down, and when she sits back up she finds Kara sitting on her knees in front of her, easing Lena’s shoes off like she’d done for Gayle, but somehow this feels far more tender.

“You see?” Lena gestures at the action. “This is exactly my point. You are probably the most selfless person I’ve ever known,” she laughs. And then, softer, “I’ll ever know.”

Kara gives her a thoughtful look, a small twitch in her brow as she tugs the shoe off, but she pauses before going for the other one, her hands laying flat against her own thighs. 

“You know it’s not… It’s not selfish to do what you need to do for yourself,” Kara explains slowly. “To put yourself first. You know that, right?”

The moment is as sobering as the snarling cold outside, but certainly far quieter. 

Kara blinks like an afterthought, a small knit forming in her pursed mouth, and she quickly goes back to Lena’s other shoe. 

Maybe it’s the rose-tinted fantasy of a vacation where no one knows them, but the empty stares and tip-toeing indifference feels long gone, like something that belonged to a different version of themselves, and Lena would stay as long as she could if it meant holding on to it just a moment longer, because there’s an inescapable dread that they’ll return to those roles when they return to the city.

Once Lena’s shoes are off, and Kara kicks off her own, and they’ve both shed their coats, their cheeks still pink from the cold, Kara gives Lena an expectant look, like an anticipatory goodnight, one that Lena finds she’s not ready for.

Everything’s always ending, time has never been a friend of theirs, Lena just wants to stall a little longer even if none of it is real.

Lena leans back on her hands, biting her lip. “Are you tired?”

Kara’s shrug is slight. “A little.”

“Do you want to go to sleep?”

“Do you?”

Lena shakes her head dumbly. And then, pressing her mouth tightly closed to keep her smile dampened, she lifts a brow. “You know, I’m not that drunk.”

Kara raises her own eyebrows. “Yeah? Tell that to the eight cosmos you sucked down.”

“Please, you think I haven’t built up a stronger tolerance than that?” At Kara’s still bemused skepticism, Lena huffs. “Okay, fine, I’m drunk, but I’m saying I’m not _ that _ drunk. Besides, those were over the last three hours, I’m good, I’m fabulous.”

Kara laughs, her untroubled smile ethereal. “Okay, what’s your angle? You trying to drive us somewhere?”

“I think there’s a bottle of champagne in the fridge.” She bites her lip. “Stay up with me a bit?”

Kara’s shaking her head before Lena’s even finished the question. “You can forget it. Trust me, you’ll thank me in the morning.”

But Lena musters up a pout almost worth measuring up to Kara’s expertise. “I don’t want it to be morning yet.”

“Okay, tell you what.” Rather than an explicit answer, Kara holds up a finger to Lena’s bratty impatience, and goes to rummage around her duffel set at the end of the cot, poking through loose clothing and the rattle of toiletries. 

Just as Lena stands on her toes to sneak a look over Kara’s shoulder and snag a glimpse of what she’s up to, the blonde spins around, brushing Lena back onto the balls of her feet, with a clear, plastic bag in her hands.

“How do you feel about marshmallows?”

Lena blinks, her pout giving rise to a frown. “How long have those been in there?”

“This morning.”

“And you brought them… just in case?”

“Figured an opportunity would come up.” At Lena’s eyebrow raise, Kara’s serious face relents, and the corner of her mouth perks into a boyish smile. “Okay, yeah, fine, I was gonna ask by tomorrow night if we could make s’mores but — come on, it’s an ice-land and there’s a fireplace _ right _ there. What else would we do?

Lena wants to make fun of her, wants to jab her in the chest and stir out a blush and tease her for how much of a goofy child she still is at heart and maybe always will be, but Lena finds the blossoming sunshine that sprouts in her chest and the pink of Kara’s eager smile far too distracting.

Of course, it’s not surprising that Kara rejects the champagne idea so immediately. The blonde’s sunk into this stern, nurturing role tonight, she’s taken a resilient control of the situation that was — dare Lena say it — unusually, addictively attractive. And so it’s no surprise she says no, keeps playing this responsible bartender. 

But, oh, it’s an enchanting surprise that Kara doesn’t want the night to end either.

Soon enough, they’re both sprawled on the floor in front of the fireplace, draped across a haphazard mess of blankets and pillows from the bed. Kara sits cross-legged, focusing intently on the marshmallow at the end of her stick, trying and failing for the fourth time to roast one without setting it on fire, while Lena, laying on her side and propped on an elbow, laughs at her expense. It’s not intentional that her head just nearly hovers over Kara’s lap, that Lena’s hair drapes across Kara’s knee, it’s just that the small patch of carpet between the foot of the bed and the fireplace isn’t a large space to begin with, their makeshift cloud of cushions can only be so big. While Kara sets yet another aflame again, Lena twists her own stick lazily, catching an expert spot down by the embers and roasting the sweet treat a delicious golden-brown. Pulling it back, Kara huffs, bordering on a whine.

“Okay, seriously, how do you do that? Is there anything you can’t do?”

Smirking, Lena picks small bites with her fingers. “I’m awful at pool if it makes you feel better.”

“What? But you’re so good at bowling.”

“Kara, those are two completely different games.”

Grumbling, Kara discards her fifth charred marshmallow, sticking yet another onto the stick. 

With a laugh, Lena relents. “Okay, god, this is embarrassing to watch. Here.” She rips another golden piece from hers and holds it up to Kara’s mouth. 

Lena hasn’t forgotten how good-looking Kara is, how she has an enticing sex appeal, an ungodly figure and a butterflies-in-your-stomach kind of smile. She didn’t forget this, no, not exactly. It's an objective fact, whatever.

On the other hand, it hasn’t been something Lena’s explicitly, actively thought about or noticed. She hasn’t been dreamily admiring the angle of her jawline or the flex of her forearms. No, Lena’s been too busy paying attention to the words coming out of her mouth and this fleeting, idealistic notion of forgiveness than to step back and ogle. 

Lena hasn’t _ forgotten _ about these feelings she used to have for Kara, it just hasn’t been on the forefront of her mind anymore. There’s not much of a point to considering it. Whatever supposed romantic fling they had wasn’t the point.

But there is something undeniably, irritatingly erotic about the peak of Kara’s tongue when she opens her mouth for the bite, about the damp heat of her breath on Lena’s fingers. What’s even worse is that it’s so innocent, it’s completely efficient, and Kara does not linger at all or draw attention to the action. She just leans forward and quickly takes the marshmallow, like any other friend, and that’s it, it’s already over.

She could blame it on the cosmos, sure, the distantly familiar stir of something somewhere just so _ low. _ She can’t, however, really go so far as to attribute the alcohol to how Lena takes her sticky fingers into her mouth, how she sucks off the sugary remnants slowly, how she meets Kara’s eyes when she does, how she watches Kara’s eyes drop to the action just before Lena pulls them out with a wet _ pop. _

The moment passes.

After an obnoxious amount of time intermittently roasting the marshmallows, all the while talking in low tones and giggling through their wandering exchange like they’re exactly the old friends they’ve been claiming to be, they both seem to have their fill. Basking in the bone-deep, pleasant heat of the fire that casts a warm glow across Kara’s face, that alights her smile like a sunset, Lena wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.

It’s simple, it’s effortless, it’s as if they haven’t just been coexisting strangers for six weeks, Kara has never felt so familiar.

Although after they’ve more or less finished with the sweets — Kara keeps popping plain, cold marshmallows into her mouth throughout their conversations even though she always claims it’ll be the last one — Lena’s sobered up some, and she finally manages to convince Kara to humor her with the champagne. Maybe it’s just another excuse to stay up, gives them something to do, maybe this is why Kara agrees, maybe Lena will never know.

She sits up now, legs extended out towards the fire, one arm braced behind her and the other holding a small plastic cup with unnecessarily expensive bubbly, while Kara still sits with her elbows loosely draped on her knees, leaning forward towards her like a subconscious habit rather than an intentional choice.

Over halfway through the bottle, Lena starts to grow more serious.

“One rule.”

Kara groans, hanging her head low in exasperation. “No, can’t call it on this.”

“I get to call it on anything, that’s the point. You have to tell me.”

“No, you’re being crazy.”

“Kara, don’t test me right now.”

“I’m serious!” Kara laughs, and Lena’s smiling so wide that her cheeks ache. “Look, you can ask me stuff _ about _ it, but I’m not telling you what I got you for Christmas.”

“But you do admit to getting me something?”

Rolling her eyes, Kara huffs. “Yeah, fine, I did. So what.”

Her smile not relenting in the slightest, Lena backtracks. “Okay so wait, you already got it? Or you’re going to?”

“I already did.”

“Kara, Christmas is over two weeks away.”

“Well I knew what I was getting you, and it was available, so I got it.” Kara gives Lena a sarcastically pointed look. “Would you like me to return it and buy it again later?”

“You _ bought _ something?”

“Yeah.” Kara’s expression softens, as if they’re suddenly both thinking of the same thing. “Did you want another shoebox of embarrassingly emotional letters?”

Lena doesn’t have much heart to tell Kara that she didn’t read any of the others, just the one she opened in front of her when she received the gift all that time ago, that they’re all gone and likely only exist in some recyclable pencils now or something. Save for the one Lena hid in her suitcase, none of the rest remain, and even that one Lena still hasn’t read, it was left forgotten in a nameless corner somewhere in her hotel suite since she started seeing Kara again.

Kara’s eyes trace back and forth between Lena’s, searching, like this is the part where Lena shuts down, like a reminder of the gift is what tips them over and back into the shadows. 

But, even to Lena’s own surprise, she just feels free.

“I thought it was sweet,” she admits, meeting Kara’s gaze evenly, like a promise, like a white flag. 

She doesn’t know if Kara gets it, but the sweet touch of her mouth perking up makes Lena’s chest feel warmer than the fire could be capable of.

“You know, this is nice,” Lena remarks as she playfully taps her small cup against Kara’s, forgetting the Christmas talk for now. “Not that it used to bother me or anything, but I like being able to have a drink with you now. Even if it’s probably not your healthiest habit,” she adds with a playful eye roll.

But Kara’s smile falters, she doesn’t laugh. “Why do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“You just—” Kara’s jaw clenches, and whatever flare of discomfort that had arisen now fades before Lena’s even fully processed it. “Nothing, never mind.”

But Lena is nothing if not stubborn. Kara is always so agreeable with everything, and so Lena is of course eager to cling to this point where Kara expresses her own opinion for once, like a challenge.

She nudges her leg against Kara’s knee, persistent. “No, really, what is it?”

Kara looks away, more uncomfortable now with discussing this than she had been with whatever bothered her in the first place.

“You just act like… I mean I’ve changed, okay? You love to point it out. I drink, I swear, I dress differently, I started wearing contacts, whatever, but you just… you treat it as if it’s a bad thing.”

Lena doesn’t get it, isn’t sure if it’s the alcohol or not. “Is it supposed to be a good thing?”

Kara sighs tiredly. “I just don’t get why it has to be a _ thing _ at all _ . _ You drink and swear, all my friends do. Why does it make me less if I do?”

“But you… your sister — you didn’t drink for her? So, something changed, right?”

“Okay, yeah, to not trigger her, but in case you haven’t noticed, she’s made a lot of progress.” Kara exhales sharply again, rising to a sitting position and rubbing her eyes. “I just mean, I feel like you think I’m not mature enough to drink responsibly, that I must be using it as some kind of unhealthy outlet for something, even though everyone else drinks. I just do too now.”

“Oh.” Lena’s eye drops, and her vision sways, the warm glow of their room lights shimmering and bleary, but she’s not so intoxicated to be missing Kara’s point. “I never meant to imply…”

But she did, didn’t she?

For a horrifying second, just a fleeting slash of a moment, Lena wonders if it’s not Kara who broke after their fall-out, if Lena was never the strong one in the first place.

It passes just as quickly, but it leaves Lena with an adoringly warm sense of admiration for the woman sitting on this bed, and Lena can’t remember the last time she let Kara know that.

Kara’s cheeks burn red with something hotter than the champagne, her eyes flitting away self-consciously, and Lena can’t imagine how long this has been on her mind, what else she’s scared to bring up.

Scared of what, exactly?

Maybe just letting herself feel guilt isn’t always enough. What’s the point if Lena doesn’t do anything with it? What purpose does empathy serve if it only festers in her throat like a sticky cold, if she lets it simply gather up and does nothing to treat it?

Without thinking too much of it, Lena sits forward and drops a hand to Kara’s, the one wrapped around her cup. It’s just a bare touch, it’s nothing intimate or particularly novel, just the skimming of Lena’s fingertips over Kara’s knuckles, pulling Kara’s gaze up to her.

“I’m sorry.” Lena doesn’t know how to exhibit her sincerity any better, any other way except for the tentativeness of her touch or the devotion in her tone, she doesn’t know the right words. “You’re right. That’s not fair to you, I wasn’t… just, I’m sorry. You deserve better than that.”

Kara’s throat bobs with a swallow, her eyes flickering across Lena’s face. “Has anyone ever told you that you can be really intense when you’re drunk?”

Lena laughs, a surprised scoff. “No, but now that I think about it, you might be onto something.”

The somber tension loosens in Kara, a splay of that sweet smile returns.

“But really.” Lena’s fingers tap against Kara’s hand again. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll um… do better.”

Kara doesn’t pull away, and neither of them mind all that much when their hands remain in contact as their conversation continues. Their fingers aren’t interlaced, it’s just a touch on the hand that still holds her drink, but the blonde seems to have lost her interest to keep sipping at it because she doesn’t lift it to her mouth again, and Lena has perhaps drunk enough to wonder if it’s so as not to break their touch.

It sure seems like it.

“Can I ask you something?” Lena asks.

“Sure.”

Distractedly, and perhaps nervously, Lena traces small, slow circles along Kara’s knuckle, watching the motion. “I understand why you quit CatCo, but… why haven’t you tried to work somewhere else? Another publication?”

“Ah.” Kara chuckles, but there’s no humor to it. “I guess I just feel like I already had my shot at it all. I tried, I got published, I made a difference — for better or for worse — and it… didn’t work out.”

In another universe, this might give Lena hope, but in this one, it just makes her ache.

“But there’s so much more out there,” Lena prods gently, wary of overstepping. “There’s still more that you can do, it doesn’t have to end there.”

Kara only smiles like this is something she’s already heard hundreds of times, like Lena isn’t the first to try this. “Yeah, I know, but I’m done writing. It just doesn’t give me that same feeling, it wasn’t something I looked forward to anymore, it just became this thing that I started to dread. That chapter of my life is over, and I’m okay with that.”

Lena has some sense of how she looks, her clenched jaw and the dizzying swim of her eyes, and Kara nudges against the hand touching her own to pull her attention back again.

“Hey. I promise, this is what I want.”

She’s far too out of it to process the implications, to piece together why this weight presses down on her skull, but she knows it does, knows this doesn’t all fit together the way it should.

Lena goes to refill her drink, and this line ends. 

When she returns, Kara’s propped herself back against the base of the bed, legs outstretched. Lena flops back onto the floor of pillows, and it’s more out of a half-delirious exhaustion that she lays again on her back, dropping her head onto Kara’s thigh, it’s a reflexive afterthought that her free hand blindly finds Kara’s again and dangles against her shoulder, even if it’s just to make vague, harmless strokes. 

Their conversation flows to much lighter topics, far easier than Lena expected it could. Every time the two of them have ever had any sort of meaningful dialogue addressing anything beyond the superficial, a difficult woe of their past, things tend to darken. They very soon need a break, some kind of space from each other. It ends, they part, they reset, they come back.

That’s how it would go months ago, when they first started this, when they were actually speaking together.

This is a new phase for them, uncharted, unfamiliar, and so utterly far from unwanted.

When the conversation rounds back to Gayle and the chaotic misunderstanding of tonight, Lena is nearly holding back tears.

“Okay look, stop, don’t get me wrong,” Kara is trying to explain through Lena’s laughter. “She’s beautiful! I do really like her, I had a great time with her, she’s great. And she’s really nice.”

“Oh, are you kidding? She’s one of the rudest people I’ve ever met.”

Kara tilts her head down at Lena patronizingly. “C’mon, anyone can tell she cares about you.”

Lena rolls her eyes as she cranes her neck up off Kara’s leg to lift her drink to her mouth, her words mumbled and half-hearted. “Yeah, no — if she cared about me, she wouldn’t be trying to sleep with you.” 

It’s not until she’s tipping back the plastic cup to find that it’s empty again, along with the silence that follows her comment, that Lena realizes what she’s said, that she notices how Kara’s watching her with an unreadable but incredibly focused expression.

The only course of action Lena can think to take with that is simply to ignore it and move on.

“I’m glad you like her, though. I think she’s lonely.” Lena clears her throat and purses her lips, her features softening, drumming her fingers against Kara’s palm. “You’re a good person for that. I mean, you’re good at changing that.”

Kara doesn’t answer immediately, like she’s still considering calling Lena out for something, like she might yank the comment back out and demand it be inspected — but she’s never been one to push, and that hasn’t changed.

They only talk about Gayle for a little longer, their conversation dwindling to something far more aimless, much like their late-night phone calls back home. 

Not _ home _ home, just National City. 

But this is different, of course. While there’s no particular direction they’re intending, they’re also not just saying words to fill an allotted time limit so as to satisfy a deal they made at touching base every so often, where they’d feel guilty if they ended their calls too soon. 

It’s the kind of nonsensical, quiet muttering when neither of them want this private sliver of the universe carved out just for them to disappear, like if they so much as close their eyes then it will be gone by morning. Even if it is quite nearly three in the morning and Lena keeps nodding off every two minutes.

Eventually, Kara’s the one to relent. When she pulls her hand away and sits forward, urging Lena’s head out of her lap, the loss of contact is a cold gust of disappointment Lena can’t articulate.

“Okay, yeah, I don’t think Gayle’s gonna let us sleep in tomorrow, and you’re definitely gonna regret all this champagne, so…” Kara nods over her shoulder to the cot by the window. “We should probably go to sleep.”

But Lena’s too tired to argue — or maybe she’s just been consistently drunk for too long today — though she does make an indignant _ hmph _as Kara urges her to her feet, tugging her by the wrists. Lena will be embarrassed about this in the morning of course, when she’ll remember how Kara has to coerce her into changing out of her vodka-splashed clothes into something more comfortable, how she actively stuffs Lena’s toothbrush in her mouth for her, arguing with Lena to upkeep what just feels like such an annoying hygienic routine. 

It’s not attractive by any means, not the alluring Lena Luthor that she’s advertised to be, it’s not press-friendly. It’s silly, it’s stupid. Lena snorts with foaming toothpaste in her mouth, and Kara laughs as she swipes a dollop off Lena’s chin. Lena sits on the closed toilet seat, eyes closed and humming while Kara wipes her face clean of her makeup, and Lena angles her face away multiple times just to be difficult, and the two times that Kara threatens to give up on her, Lena tugs Kara back by the hem of her t-shirt with a burst of giggles and promises that she’ll behave.

It’s not cute, it’s not a side of her that Lena is keen for anyone to be privy to, and Lena will hate herself in the morning for it.

But right now it just feels very _ them, _ and it’s been a long time since Lena felt quite so connected to anyone like this, makes her wonder why now, what it’s supposed to entail in a grander scheme, what the point a taste of this would have when she has to leave in three weeks anyway.

Something about the looming of their inevitable end makes her cold, makes the world feel darker than the nighttime hour even with the last dregs of the low, simmering fire that lights the room, and oh, of course Lena knows why, but how would she ever face an idea like that sober?

Maybe that’s why it’s so much easier to be like this now.

As in, when Kara’s deemed her finally ready for bed and finished tossing all the blankets and pillows back onto the bed, when she waves at the cot and is half-way through saying a sweet goodnight with a smile that is both reserved and welcoming, it’s so much easier to just take Kara’s hand and pull her along with her.

It’s cold, it’s dark, wasn’t the point that she can’t do this alone?

But Kara hesitates. She resists as Lena pulls, as she climbs onto the mess of covers and Kara doesn’t immediately follow. There’s a furrow in her brow, just a dubious pause, Kara stares at the bed like it’s a dangerous, shameful thing.

Lena crawls back and up to her knees, still holding Kara’s hand. “You did say this is usually how this goes.”

“What?”

She nods at the bed. “You said they usually end up sleeping together.”

Kara makes a quiet, almost inaudible squeak from the back of her throat, but her face is devoid of any reaction aside from a raise of her eyebrows.

“That was a joke. Sorry.” Lena coughs. “We don’t have to make it a thing. Just, please? I um… I don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Is not making things a thing becoming our thing?” Kara’s mouth scrunches small, but she’s already relenting, leaning into Lena’s touch and letting herself be dragged forward. 

Now with the assurance that Kara’s following, Lena collapses exhaustedly back onto the mountain of pillows that is so much comfier than when on the floor, and she just laughs. “You’re expecting way too much from my brain right now if you think I have any idea what you just said.”

Kara’s rather awkward and stiff about it, she keeps to the far edge of the bed as she slowly peels her side of the duvet back and slips under, like she’s trying not to disturb some unspoken danger. But Lena’s fucking tired, and she’s missed the kind of warmth that only comes from having another body in her bed, and it’s outright perverse that Kara is the only person Lena’s been able to let this close in years.

It’s fine, it’s whatever, there’s a lot of damage that’s been done tonight, Lena can deal with the humiliation tomorrow. She never claimed to know what she was doing. 

Or maybe she did, she can’t remember.

Maybe it’s the physical distance between them, could have something to do with the last few months, has everything to do with the alcohol, but an abrupt oppressive melancholy swallows her, the seep of a wave rushing over her, and just as quickly a sting burns behind Lena’s eyes.

She must make some kind of sound, or maybe it’s on her face, because in the faint orange glow that the fire’s embers cast, Lena can see Kara turn her head, and she looks at Lena with unabashed concern.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

What a perfect question, the fattest lottery of the decade so far, of a higher worth than all of her assets combined.

“Why did it have to be you?” Lena whispers.

“What?”

“I could have lived with almost anyone else. Of all people to lose, why did it have to be you?”

The corners of Kara’s mouth pull down, her gaze sweeping over Lena’s face, so delicate and tender that it nearly cuts through all of the fog.

“But I… I’m right here.”

“C’mere,” Lena mumbles instead, reaching blindly across the bed until she catches Kara’s wrist. “I just — I’m so _ cold.” _

She doesn’t pull Kara across the whole way, doesn’t actually cuddle up to her side or anything, and Kara doesn’t try to either. But there’s a radiation coming off her that is pleasantly gratifying, just the feeling of Kara’s warm skin under her hand, of her entire presence in this bed, Lena can’t remember the last time she could so bonelessly relax like this, so immediate, and the sick gloom escapes her like it was never there at all.

Kara on her back, Lena on her side, their hands slowly twist in mirrored unison in the space between them until Lena’s fingers finally wrap around Kara’s palm, a little disorganized, not quite neatly fitted — this must be that holy serenity everyone seeks when they race to simply get away.

The weight of sleep is already bogging her down, tugging her under, Lena is fading fast as they both settle into the bed.

But.

“Mm.” When Lena buries her face into the pillow, she can only smell Kara. “I don’t want to go.”

Kara’s chuckle is weak, half-hearted. “We still have another two days.”

“No, I mean… you know. Back to Metropolis.”

Kara doesn’t answer immediately. She doesn’t—

“So don’t,” she murmurs.

Lena blinks her eyes back open weakly, seeking Kara in the darkness, unsure if she finds her.

_ Of course I’m leaving, what else would I do? Stay? Why would I ever stay? _

Lena sighs, a soft hum, closes her eyes. “I think I have to.”

“You think?”

But Lena doesn’t answer, she’s so tired, she can hardly remember what they’re talking about anymore. Rather than respond, she only presses closer, their hands squished between them, Lena’s forehead just grazing at Kara’s shoulder, her feet against her shins, it’s close, it’s so addictively warm, it finally feels like _ enough. _ Of what, she doesn’t know.

It’s just safe, like immunity too whimsical for reality but promising enough for this.

xx

When Lena wakes up, it’s in Kara’s arms, face buried in a soft neck, with just the faintest rise and fall of their breaths pooling in perfect harmony.

It’s also to a mad fucking headache like a crowbar splitting her skull in half.

Lena groans involuntarily, shifting deeper into the embrace so as to hide her face from the piercing beams of light that stream from the windows, from the suffocating pressure of wakeful sobriety. Her nose grazes against the side of Kara’s neck, her mouth accidentally brushing across her collarbone, but it’s far from intimate when Kara sleepily rouses with a twitch, shuffling beneath her.

“Quit it,” the blonde mumbles, squirming as if to detach herself, but Lena just makes an even louder grumble of objection, and her arm that’s draped across Kara’s waist tightens, keeping her rooted.

“Stop, I don’t want to wake up right now.”

“You’re the one who woke me up.” But Kara settles again, her arm falling lazily across Lena’s back in defeat.

Lena ignores her. “I don’t think I even want to be _ alive _ right now.”

“Mm, tough luck. What time is it?”

“Hell if I know.” When Kara twists around to catch a glimpse of the clock, Lena makes another objective _ hmph _ at the movement, and Kara just chuckles, a laugh liquid like honey.

“Listen, you’re gonna have to face the morning sooner or later.”

“So later then. Stop moving.”

Kara taps her shoulder, apparently not going to entertain Lena’s laziness because she gently pries out of her grip. “You can have five more minutes, but I’m getting up, and then you are too.”

Lena’s only response is a petulant grunt.

“C’mon,” Kara laughs as she stands up, running a hand through her messy bedhead, something that Lena finds far more attractive than she should while she has the heart-burn of a sixty-year-old man and the nausea to match. 

“It’s already almost nine,” Kara continues. “You know Gayle’s gonna be calling us any second.”

At the mention of the blonde heiress, it all comes rushing in — why they’re here, the resort, the vodka, the flirting, the jealousy, the supple familiarity of their hushed, sweet late-night secrets and the shine of Kara’s eyes when Lena said far too much.

She can feel it coming up her throat, the panic, the anxiety, the blood-curdling _ mortifying _—

Oh, no, never mind.

Lena scrambles passed Kara for the bathroom and only just lunges for the toilet in time.

Slumped on the floor, leaning over the bowl with her forehead pressed to her forearm while Kara sweeps Lena’s hair back — she settles. Her brain pieces together last night sluggishly, just fleeting images, fuzzy flickers of memory as the evening maps itself out like an old, grainy film against the inside of her eyelids. She’s not feeling any better physically, no, she’s definitely going to throw up at least twice more, but in terms of losing her dignity over last night? Strangely, Lena feels calm, she doesn’t hate the imprint of it. There were a few moments she was a little sloppy, okay, yeah, those weren’t ideal, but for the most part? It’s remarkably fine.

No, there’s only one thing that lingers from last night, Lena realizes as she vomits again, as it scorches up her throat and leaves tears in her eyes, as Kara laughs above her even as she presses a cold, wet towel to the back of her neck.

Yeah, she’s absolutely going to kill Gayle.

xx

Gayle has a dark, expensive pair of sunglasses pulled over her eyes when they find her in the Wy’East café over in the next door lodge. She sits alone at a long oak table with matching benches in the middle of the dining hall with her cheek slumped into her fist, a mimosa glass already in front of her.

“You both look like shit,” she says as they sit down across from her.

Kara just nods at the drink with an amused smirk. “Yeah? And how’re you feeling then?”

Gayle’s thick swallow and the way she shakes her head as she reaches for said drink gives the impression she might never have sobered up. 

“Listen. No better cure for a hangover, trust me, works every time. What about you?” She directs this to Lena. “You want one?”

Lena keeps a cool, neutral expression. “I’m good, thanks.”

“Your loss.” Gayle downs half the drink in one swoop before clearing her throat. “So, how was the rest of your guys’ night?”

Lena catches the way Kara looks to her, like the search for permission to share. Although it’s cute that she wants to check in for something so harmless, because nothing happened last night, it’s still rather all too familiar, because Lena finds she’s also not eager to clue Gayle in on what felt like such a personal thing for them. Because, the reality of it?

Lena shrugs. “It was fine, we didn’t do much. Hung out, talked.”

Maybe the details wouldn’t be particularly groundbreaking to anyone else, but it can still be their secret to keep.

They make shuffling, delicate small-talk over breakfast, though Kara seems to be the only one very keen on eating anything. Lena nibbles on a dry slice of whole-grain toast if only to put something in her stomach to absorb all her mistakes, and Gayle takes down three more mimosas and picks at an assortment of berries throughout.

Their conversation is idle, they’re all still waking up and coming to their senses, but the relative silence is broken when Kara hisses suddenly, a strip of syrup dribbling from her fork onto the thigh of her joggers.

“Shit,” Kara mutters, quickly wiping at it with a napkin. She scrubs at it, but the napkin frays and just seems to make it worse, and with a small smirk Lena bumps her knee against Kara’s under the table, teasing. Grumbling, Kara just pouts, finally giving up. “Okay, these are my favorite, I’ma be right back.”

Kara excuses herself to the bathroom, and Lena watches her leave.

“So’d you guys fuck or get into a fight?” Gayle interrupts Lena’s thoughts. “I really can’t tell.”

Lena barks a laugh. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

“What? What did I do?”

“You were trying to climb her like a tree,” Lena hisses across the table. “I know you were drunk, but really? Of everyone in that bar, you just had to pick her?”

But Gayle looks hardly phased, and she waves her glass dismissively. “Oh chill, I wasn’t actually going to do anything, and I knew she wouldn’t either. She’s not into me.”

Lena’s next argument dies in her throat because — “What? You were practically begging her to come back to your room.”

“Yeah, for you.” Gayle rolls her eyes at the inconvenience of explaining. “You’re a jealous bitch, Lena, I was trying to get the ball rolling and convince you to finally make a move. I knew she wasn’t going to say yes, and Jesus, she’s not my type.”

“I’m sorry, _ what?” _

“Oh my god.” Gayle rubs her eyes under her glasses. “Did you two get together or not?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“This conversation is a trainwreck.”

“We just— I mean, I didn’t, we weren’t ever going to—” But as she begins to start each defense, each one comes apart at her mouth and she can’t find a way to voice her contempt, she doesn’t even know what she’s arguing for. “Nothing happened last night. We just… talked about certain things.”

Gayle raises her eyebrows. “So you didn’t sleep together?”

“We didn’t have sex, no,” Lena words carefully.

“Oh my god but she totally went down on you, didn’t she?” Gayle pushes her sunglasses back over her head, sitting forward. “Or like third base? Second?”

“We didn’t _ do _ anything. Really.”

“Uh-huh. But you’re going to? Tonight, maybe?”

Lena can see Kara heading back from the bathroom, and so she irritably throws a spare napkin at Gayle with an indignant, “No, thank you very much.”

And if Gayle still doesn’t seem convinced, well, that’s her problem to deal with.

xx

The wedding isn’t actually until Sunday, so Saturday is mostly for all the hungover guests and married-couple-to-be to take advantage of all the resort has to offer.

It’s essentially a Candy Land for Gayle.

They start the day with a guided hike across the mountainside with another smaller group of wedding guests. It’s an amateur trek at best, Lena thinks the snowshoes are hardly necessary and just make the entire ordeal that much more difficult. Her disdain has absolutely nothing to do with how she falls over at least eleven times on their hour-long journey, four of said times being directly into Kara and sending them both sprawling into the fluffy snow. The tour slows and waits for them to pick back up and re-join the group the first two times, but on the fifth, Kara gets fed up and promptly hauls Lena over her shoulder and tosses her even further off the trail, and Gayle happily takes the opportunity to turn it into a one-woman snowball fight.

The tour gives up on them after that.

Next in the day is snowmobiling, which at first seems like a thankful reprieve from the physical exertion of chugging through the snow on what feels like having bricks for feet, but Lena quickly finds herself mistaken. This just becomes yet another excuse for Lena to cling to Kara’s backside like her life depends on it as she whizzes them down the slopes of the trail around the resort, making sharp, twisting turns that leave Lena shrieking in Kara’s ear. Multiple times, Kara’s booming, emphatic laughter at such moves will be abruptly cut off by the squeeze of Lena’s arms around her midsection shoving the air from her lungs, and it’s these distractions that set them back and send Gayle speeding off ahead of them. Gayle is about as smug and obnoxious at winning an unspoken race as one would expect.

They go snowboarding, and Lena is terrible at it, naturally.

Pathetically, they start on the bunny-hill, Kara leaning on her knees as she buckles Lena’s feet onto the board, rambling on about technique and form, but Lena’s just staring at the sharp curve of the icy slope they apparently expect her to somehow steer herself down on only a five-foot-long plank of wood.

“So you kinda like, you gotta keep at an angle? Try going in zig-zags, always keep one side of the board tilted up a bit. You ever been surfing? It’s like that, but this is easier, because you can’t sink in.”

Lena has not been surfing. 

Kara lets go of her hips, urging her down the short hill, of course she hasn’t retained a word of what Kara’s said. She lets the board fall flat on the smoothed down snow, and this causes her to immediately go zipping down past the other children and kids learning how to ski in a rapid, dizzying whiplash of acceleration. She doesn’t even have time to scream before her weight distribution misaligns and she’s suddenly launching into the air and onto the ground, landing on a flattened strip of snow so hard it feels like she’s shattered her tailbone on cement.

Kara’s sprinting down the hill after her before Lena’s even registered what’s happened, half-running, half-sliding, with a mangled rush of _ ohmygodohmygodohmygod. _ She comes skidding down to her knees beside Lena as she sits up, already patting her down, hands rushing over her face, shoulders, arms, legs, every part of her body that she can reach.

“Lena, _ ohmygod, _ are you okay? Are you hurt? What hurts? How many fingers am I holding up?”

The air that had been knocked from her chest slowly returns, and Lena just blinks in a daze before she reaches behind her to rub sorely at her ass.

“Fuck me, _ ow, _” she grumbles, and when the knit of Kara’s frown only deepens, Lena just bursts out into pained, exacerbated laughter.

Once Kara realizes that Lena is not on her immediate deathbed, she also begins to laugh, breathless with relief, head dropping low, and they just sit in a small heap at the bottom of the hill laughing like the rest of the children around them.

Gayle swerves down the hill expertly on her own skis, reaching them in only seconds, and she leans on her poles lazily as she slows to a stop. Her jaw snapping as she chews gum, she gives them both an unimpressed stare.

“You guys are really stupid.”

The rest of their day goes on in this fashion, just careless activities in the freezing snow and biting winds, and Lena is so far past having any feeling at all in her ears or fingers that she’s given up on even the notion of warmth. But she slowly learns over the hours that there’s a different kind of heat, a different sun to rejuvenate from, there’s one thrumming inside of her. It has nothing to do with herself — or maybe it does in a sense, it’s about a certain recipiency, making herself open and available to it — but instead for the person she has her arms wound around now 7,000 feet up in the air, the person whose shoulder she’s mumbling incoherent nonsense into because they’re riding the “magic mile sky ride” that is, quite literally, so high up she can hardly see the ground.

“Told you you’re scared of heights,” Kara laughs, her voice low and close and Lena clutches her mind to it if only for the distraction. The lift only takes two at a time, and Gayle is fifty feet ahead of them riding with one of the other wedding guests.

“I’m scared of _ dying.” _

“You know how safe this thing is? They’ve got some of the country’s most rich and famous here this weekend, imagine the kind of lawsuit they’d be charged with if anything happened to you.” And then, as if something occurs to her, Kara laughs much more sharply. “Oh my god, imagine what your mom would do to this place if you died.”

Lena squeaks, pressing deeper into Kara’s side. “Change the topic, right now.”

“Okay, okay. You want to hear a joke?”

“Yes, sure, whatever.”

“Mm, okay, so a logician’s wife is having a baby, right? Super cute stuff. So you know, the doctor hands the baby to the dad first, and the wife asks him, _ is it a boy or a girl? _ And so the logician answers, _ yes.” _

Lena pulls away only long enough to level her with an incredulously dumbfounded look. “I need to know if you specifically search the internet for bad jokes, because this can’t be unintentional.”

Kara just laughs as Lena nuzzles back into her warm embrace, winding a safe, protective arm around her shoulders. “I do, actually. Found they get more of a reaction. Want to hear another?”

“You’ve changed so many habits in the last two years, you couldn’t have dropped this one?”

“Okay, so how can you tell the difference between a chemist and a plumber?”

Lena sighs, but the convenience of her face hidden means Kara won’t notice the enamor of her smile.

“Fine. How?”

“Ask them to pronounce unionized.”

“These really are just awful.”

“How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

“I don’t know. Two?”

“A fish.”

“Kara… what?”

“A Roman walks into the bar and asks me for a martinus. I ask him, you mean a martini? And the Roman replies, _ whoa, slow down, I’ll let you know when I want more. _”

“I’ve changed my mind. You can just let me fall.”

“Y’know, you used to find these funny.”

“No, I just thought you were cute.”

“Were?”

“Shut up.”

Kara’s quiet for a moment, and Lena can’t be sure how far into the ride they are, but she refuses to peek at the nauseating journey still yet ahead of them. Even without looking, her legs are slimy with fear, every sway of both their bodies’ weights on the lift makes her stomach lurch, and the knowledge of how much further they have to go only adds to the anxiety.

“You know, when I was first adopted by the Danvers, they actually took us skiing about a month after I got there. Four of us — Eliza, Jeremiah, Alex, me. Family weekend, I guess, bonding, all that good stuff. I was already feeling pretty weird about it, felt like I was cheating on my birth parents, kind of? These new people weren’t really my family. It still all felt so temporary, like any day now we’d get a call that I could go home.”

Lena twists slightly under Kara’s arm, watches the pursed press of Kara’s lips, the faraway haze of her pale eyes that glimmer like snowflakes in this snowglobe of a world.

“I’d never even seen snow before, much less been skiing. Eliza and Jeremiah went up ahead of us, and I rode behind with Alex on the lift. Wasn’t even that high up, it was like any other skiway meant for kids and families, but I was still terrified. I mean I was twelve, everything just all felt so new, I felt like I’d landed on another planet, just about everything was a sensory overload. 

“Alex and I never really used to talk all that much, not when I first came. But I was shaking so bad I was rattling the lift, which obviously just made it all that much worse, and so she just takes my hand, tells me to calm the hell down, and just… starts telling thse jokes. The cheap ones everyone knows, you know, the classic knock-knock ones, the chicken crossing the road, all those. I’d heard a few of them but not most, and it was mostly just the way she told them, you know? Either really animated and goofy and so unlike the Alex everyone else knew, this hard-shelled, moody teenager tired of babysitting me. I dunno, it wasn’t even ten minutes, but it just was the first time since my parents died that I had really, truly laughed. I forgot about how high up we were, I forgot about all this pain and anger I was feeling, just for a moment. It was really the first time she started to feel like my sister, like someone I could count on even if we didn’t always get along. Like she’d always have my back, be there to remind me to see the good in the world if I ever forgot.” 

Kara shrugs, her quiet chuckle almost timid. “So — yeah, I like jokes. I think making someone laugh is a really cool thing, you know? It can be easy to make somebody feel good or bad about themselves, piss them off or make them feel grateful. But making someone laugh? You have to work for it, have a strategy or a certain a natural sorta wit. And I think nothing really feels better than laughing. It just makes you feel like you’re a part of something greater.”

Being so close to the warm skin of Kara’s neck, Lena can hear Kara’s tight swallow just as clearly as she sees it, as she sees the clench of her jaw and the darkening of her pink cheeks irrelevant from the cold. 

“Sorry, I know that’s — that’s super cheesy, it’s just, it’s why I like jokes, I guess. Even the bad ones.”

Lena’s always known Kara and Alex have a celestial, devoted relationship, she’s always known how close they are, she never doubted this. It’s no surprise that Alex was the first to teach Kara of belonging, of healing — they live in equal, symbiotic harmony, always fighting for the other without doubt or question.

Lena’s always observed this, always known it’s something she’d never have with Lex.

But now she’s thinking of how Kara always answers the phone, how Kara’s always quick to get the door when she knocks, how Kara never is the first to leave even when Lena’s storming in a rampage that tears apart anyone and anything in her vicinity. Kara never has all that much to say, she’s never particularly tried to defend herself or make Lena’s inner turmoil about herself or her suffering. Even when it was, even when Lena’s feelings shouldn’t have been relevant, even when Kara should have been focusing on herself.

Kara doesn’t always do much, but she always shows up. 

When Lena burrows back into Kara’s side, it’s not to hide her face, a distraction tactic to use Kara like a shield. She just leans her head on her shoulder and winds her arms around Kara’s bicep, clinging to it less like a lifeline to keep from falling and more like the first practice of appreciation before the sun sets.

“I like your jokes,” Lena admits quietly, her words nearly stolen by the howling wind. Kara doesn’t respond, but Lena feels the weight of her chin on the top of her head, and maybe the fear is worth the release.

They have lunch on the Roosevelt terrace, round wooden tables that immediately overlook the parking lot, but the real view is the distance of snow-capped evergreens and the fluctuating valley of shadowed mountains in the distance. Heat lamps line the terrace, making the shared mezze platter of various small pickings that Gayle orders for them much easier to enjoy than it would be otherwise — crispy cauliflower, pickled veggies, hummus, falafel, it’s a delicious assortment of Mediterranean snacks that fills them up surprisingly well. They polish off the lunch with beer from the resort’s local brewery, just a couple lagers and blonde ales to settle their guts with a resounding warmth after having spent their entire days so far in the cold. Well, Gayle and Kara do, Lena just wrinkles her nose and settles for a refreshing kombucha. 

It’s nothing Lena ever would have done herself, and perhaps that’s why it leaves so sweet an aftertaste.

xx

It’s during the thermal baths that Gayle says it.

It’s their last activity of the day, essentially just a heated pool, a large jacuzzi, but outdoors and with crackling ice and snow lining the outskirts of the deck. Steam floats and washes off from the water’s surface, it’s impossible to tell they’re even outside aside from the backdrop of the night. The three of them linger at the fringe of the water, drifting along the stone edge while they make idle conversation like they have been doing so all day, never running out of material, the tension of this morning long gone. 

Lena’s not really even sure what they’re talking about, not really. She’s watching the beads of sweat slowly trail down Kara’s temple through the steam, her languid smile as she leans against the wall and talks to Gayle with such a care-free charisma. It’s not about an appreciating attraction or whatever, she’s not even dropping her gaze down to the tight, thin bikini top half-obscured by the water. No, it’s something far more dangerous. 

It’s an almost overwhelming relief to see Kara let her guard down for once and not be punished for it.

Gayle’s saying something about Lena, about how it’s impossible to please her and Lena will forever be able to find something to complain about, going on about Lena’s stubbornness, and they’re of course bonding over their mutual suffering. It’s nothing new, nothing Lena hasn’t heard before, she’s not paying them much mind. It’s comfortingly mundane by now, makes Lena feel like they have this regular sort of routine, even if it’s technically at her expense.

But Kara’s laugh is so unburdened, so buoyant, how could Lena not pay attention?

“You know, I swear, sometimes the things I say to her?” Kara blows out her cheeks comically. “Goes in one ear, out the other.”

“Fuck, so true. Bitch doesn’t hear half the conversations she’s involved in, it’s no surprise she didn’t read your big story. It’s like, as soon as you address her, the girl’s gotta dip.”

It’s said as a joke, Gayle means no harm by it.

The only damage is in her assumption that Lena herself would have worked towards the kind of strength to tell Kara herself by now.

And yet.

“What?” Kara blinks at Gayle, the edges of her jovial smile flickering, strained and elastic. “What did you just say?”

Lena doesn’t even realize what this means. It’s not like it was ever an active secret she kept from Kara these last few months. Anyone that knows her at all knows she never talks about the article, much less had an interest in exploring. It was just something she refused to engage with, it’s her trademark, stubborn issue from two years ago.

That’s the point. Lena doesn’t really think twice about it anymore, it’s just like any other fact.

Kara feels differently.

It’s not immediately noticeable at first. At Kara’s hesitance and obvious confusion, Gayle seems to realize she’s said something that she shouldn’t have, and she makes a noble enough effort to move on. She swiftly takes them away from the gossipping, doesn’t give it unnecessary attention only an amateur liar would, she just carries on and keeps the conversation moving as smoothly as it had been all day. Gayle’s witty, she’s bitchy and entertaining, she makes Kara laugh like Lena wishes she knew how to, and she’s an unexpected backbone to the weekend.

But Kara wavers.

Her eloquence, her laid-back ease and the attractive way she so effortlessly blends with anyone she speaks to — it’s forced, calculated, Lena can see the fractures.

The version of Kara that Lena has come to understand over this vacation, the one she was _ just _ appreciating for how she can exist without consequence, however short it’s been, begins to slowly deteriorate before her eyes, too elusive for Lena to pick back together. 

This fond acquaintance they’ve built up over the last twenty-four hours, the sweet confidence of their newfound connection that’s been scarce these last few months, Lena watches it all ebb away throughout the rest of the evening. And as much as she’d like to pretend she has no idea where it comes from, Lena can do nothing but face the cold, icy drench of truth for the hours to come that she knows exactly what has changed between them.

The moment doesn’t come until they’re alone, of course, after dinner.

Gayle’s seemed to have picked up on something, at least. Whether she connects it back to her one particular comment, Lena can’t be sure, but the blonde heiress lingers in the hotel hallway when they say their goodnights, gives Lena a look as if to offer some sort of escape from this uncertain turmoil.

Maybe Kara was right. Maybe Gayle cares more than Lena gives her credit for.

But it does nothing to change how Kara looks at her now once she’s closed the door, she paces into the room, and Lena remains hovering in the entryway like a child waiting to be scolded.

She knows, Kara knows, and they both finally know they’re on the same page.

Lena expects to have to pry this out of Kara, that she’ll have to urge her to open up about how she feels and how Lena hurts her. She expects to have to fight for what she’s looking for, but instead it whirls back on her now with the steadfast ferocity of someone who’s been waiting for too long.

Kara doesn’t even have to pretend.

“Tell me that was a joke,” she says flatly. “Please tell me she wasn’t being serious.”

Lena honestly can’t decide between playing dumb or not, she isn’t even sure she understands the true crime here in the first place.

“If you mean what Gayle said, um—”

_ “What _ the hell else would I be talking about?”

Lena swallows. Has Kara ever interrupted her before? She’s not sure. When Lena’s being stubborn and difficult, sure, for good reason, but Lena’s not sure if Kara has ever been the person to cut her off. She’s not sure if this is a good or a bad thing, she’s not sure if she’s over-analyzing things too much right now, but her heart pounds in her chest and nothing about this feels computable, she’s not sure of anything anymore.

Lena takes one last, steadying breath, as if she knows there’s only a crash to come.

“Yes.”

“You haven’t read it.”

“No.”

An impasse of resilient indifference passes over Kara’s face like a shadow, her breath quickens. “Right. Okay. Can you at least tell me why?”

Lena’s mouth opens, but nothing comes. How is she supposed to surmise that in one answer?

“No, actually, you know what? Two years ago, I would’ve known. God, even three months ago? I might’ve just known why even better than you, and I wouldn’t have been surprised.”

Lena doesn’t even know whose story this is, much less what page they’re on. “If you understand then… why does this make a difference now?”

“You know, you’ve been telling me all this time that I have to take this seriously, that I can see myself out if I don’t want to help you.” Kara’s laugh is wet, catalytic. “Seriously, am I being punked? This is the very thing you claim you’re trying to forgive me for, and you haven’t even read it? Is this a joke to _ you?” _

Lena can only watch Kara, stunned by her outburst, but not like she’s losing her temper, rather instead just watching her grow into a skin neither of them knew she had.

“What are we doing, Lena?”

“I don’t… I’m really not sure what you, I—?”

“I know why you wouldn’t want to read it.” Kara takes heavy, controlled breaths, her eyes wide and fervent. “Believe me, I am just about the only other person in the world who would get it, get why that _ thing _ isn’t a gift or a beautiful tribute to you, that it doesn’t matter what it said. I know because there is no one out there who hates it more than we do, and I hate it more than you ever could. I know it was never about the job, it wasn’t about understanding why I did it or having a good reason for it. I know none of that makes it easier to forgive me, I know it just makes it harder. God, I know that it’s the worst part.”

“What is?”

“It’d be easier, right?” Kara swallows, her pale eyes wobbling. “If the article was bad? If I never had a good reason? If I wasn’t actually in love with you?”

Lena has spent years fighting tooth and nail to make sure this fact alone never faces the light, to make sure she’d never hear Kara say these words.

“Because otherwise, what’s the point?” Kara laughs brokenly. “What would be the point in trusting anyone? What’s the point if someone can love you _ that much, _ and still so knowingly lie to you?”

The crippling panic for how they’ve so quickly spiralled into this when just hours ago they were at the peak of their ensemble, it makes a nauseating mix with the blatant, shameless truth slamming Lena in the chest now.

“I’m sorry.” Though what she’s apologizing for, it’s clear she doesn’t know.

“I think you want me to hate you,” Kara says thickly. "I think you feel like that’d give you some kind of closure, ‘cause then you can finally tell yourself that this is over.”

Lena answers too quickly. “Of course you should hate me, meeting me just ruined your life, what good have I ever brought you?”

“Oh _ god _Lena, but I’m not ruined!” 

Kara’s found an unstoppable tempo, everything she’s been feeling comes rushing out now, the gates can’t be closed now that they’re open and Lena has no idea if she’s ready for exactly all that she’s been waiting for.

How did this fall apart so fast? Was it never together in the first place?

“Maybe I don’t have the fancy job you think I should or a six-figure income, maybe I’m always going to be a bartender, maybe I’ll never be able to afford a retirement plan, and maybe this was never the life I pictured for myself,” Kara rambles, heated, but there’s nothing disorganized about it. “But I am not ruined, and you don’t get to tell me I am. Fine, I started drinking when you left, but I can’t _ believe _ you think so little of me that I’d be that reckless after everything Alex went through to let it consume my life.

“I am not broken because I’ve changed.” Kara’s face is red with her vehement spirit. “I just found my own way to cope, and you don’t get to shit on it because it doesn’t look like how you think healing should be, because you turned your heartbreak into so much success and I just made mine a lesson to learn from. I will give you anything you want and everything I have to fix what I messed up, but this? The way I learned to live with myself, somebody I’ve never hated more, the way I was able to deal with the worst mistake I’ve ever made without destroying myself? No, Lena, you can’t take that. You don’t get to pity me for how I loved you and fell apart, not when I’m the one that pulled myself back together.”

Loved?

Kara turns away sharply, scrubbing furiously at the tears that spill so quickly down her face, and she paces towards the window, putting her back on Lena. There’s a sticky discomfort with how this once repulsed Lena, that face, a haunting of disgust. But what could possibly be more mesmerizing and beautiful than someone who still so unequivocally _ feels? _

Lena isn’t sure what to feel, can only stare at her, sitting on the edge of the bed, hands in her lap, wondering when she became her own antagonist.

“I don’t think this was ever about forgiving me,” Kara says, still facing the window, her voice clouded, distant. “Honestly, I don’t even know what you’re trying to do anymore.”

Oh yes, she knows this is not the time for her input, not the time for _ this, _ but— 

“I’m just trying to move on.”

Kara whirls around, the irritated fire back in her eyes. “Then what was last night about? The waiter, Gayle? Why do you say we never had a relationship in the first place and then act like that? Why do you hold my hand and ask me to sleep with you? Why do I wake up with you in my arms like it won’t be the last time? Why do you say you don’t want to lose me when I’m literally standing right here in front of you waiting for you to say something you’re never going to say?”

The bold confrontation doesn’t register properly, it isn’t compatible with the frail structure of Lena’s structured mindset, everything she’s pieced together to keep these last three months from falling apart.

Maybe that’s the final crack of her downfall.

“You can’t do that.” Kara shakes her head resolutely. “You can’t give me hope for something that’s never going to happen. Because I was finally okay. I came to terms with what I did and the fact that I lost you. I knew this was over. And then you came back, and you said you were going to leave. I knew that, I got that, I was okay with it. I wanted to help you move on like I was able to, because I did, I _ finally _ moved on from hating myself.”

This isn’t where it works, it might just be where it ends.

“But this? Telling me you don’t want to go?” Kara’s voice quivers just before it cracks. “How am I supposed to not have hope when you look at me like that?”

Lena’s vision blurs, her ears start to ring. “Like what?”

Even in unfathomable strength, Kara just looks so tired.

“I’ll always love you, Lena. I’m always just gonna want the best for you, but I…” She pauses, as if remembering something, and a reluctant understanding passes over her face. “I think at some point I have to choose me. I think Alex was right. Because I don’t know what we’re doing here anymore, and I can’t keep doing this if I have hope. I’m sorry, I just… I can’t put myself through that again. I’m sorry.”

Maybe she didn’t have the words to articulate it, but Lena’s known since they stepped into this room that this is what they would come down to, but it does nothing to change the fact that her chest crumples and her stomach bottoms out all the same. There’s a hiccuping plea building up, just behind her teeth, and it tastes like _ don’t go don’t go please oh god please don’t leave. _

But it anchors to her own obstinate insecurities and doesn’t come out.

“So, if you’re leaving like you say you will,” Kara continues, gaze dropping to the floor as she wipes her face again. “Then please just go. But I’m done. I just, I have to be done.”

The only consolation is perhaps that Lena knows all she’s capable of is ruin, and Kara’s not wrong in recognizing her safety can only be found elsewhere.

After a pause, Kara’s head lifts, and she meets Lena’s eye. “And if you want to stay, then… just stay.”

Blood pounding in her ears like the deafening clatter of church bells, Lena can’t say a thing. She can’t so much as name this sudden, plummeting despair.

When Kara starts re-packing her bag, Lena says nothing. When Kara looks to her expectantly like Lena might give her what she wants to hear, she says nothing. When Kara moves to the door and Lena wants to ask where she plans to even go at this ridiculous hour, when she wants to tell her to stay at least the night and she can leave in the morning if she really wants, when Lena just wants to promise her that—

Kara leaves without another word, and Lena doesn’t stop her. 

It mimics a scene from nearly two years ago, a sharp _ get out. _ This is the second time Kara leaves and Lena never knew that it could hurt so much more than then.

When Kara leaves, Lena finally caves, she falls over her knees and buries her face in her hands, sinking immediately into the gasping sobs and breaking for how she’s losing the very person she swore she didn’t want to keep.

Could this really be it?

Clock ticks midnight, her chest burns, the soul-crushing revelation that this is truly over, Lena is just trying to stop her hands from shaking.

Did she really think there could have been more?

Cheesy jokes on a ski lift suspended in the clouds, Kara’s laughter sounded like chardonnay and Lena didn’t know how to tell her. Her hand on Lena’s thigh, she should have known this sooner. The drop of an eye to a forbidden mouth, what if Kara had only asked?

She just expected better of them, is all.

Lena could have said _ see you later _ or even something so vague as _ maybe someday, _ but Kara is ironically a person who deserves the truth far more than anyone ever should.

Lena refuses to tell her a lie, and they both knew from the beginning that this was always where they’d land.

Tears burning from her eyes like acid, jaw trembling from the chill of indecision, Lena never knew there existed something far darker than heartbreak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me 6 hours ago: i can't update today i have 300+pages of reading to do  
me now: 😶
> 
> ps shoutout to my guy lyd — u can thank her for the marshmallow scene


	21. i'll die to win because i'm born to lose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiii long time no see
> 
> school got wild, life got busy, etc etc the usual deal, thanks for the patience my guys

January 1st, 2020: Day 731

Kara stumbles in through the front door blindly, gasping for air, face streaked with tears, snot, and smears of leftover mascara from the night before. 

“Alex, I-I didn’t, I _ couldn’t _ — Andrea, she just, she called, and— Alex, _ Lena _, she doesn’t—” 

Alex meets her halfway, comes racing from the couch and catches Kara by the arms, trying to make sense of the jumbled nonsense pouring out of Kara’s mouth through her frantic gulps for air, the wheezing sobs and wild, gesticulating waves of her arms.

“Hey hey you’re okay, c’mon, just breathe.” Alex cradles Kara’s face, trying to swipe Kara’s hair from the sticky rivulets of tears. “Breathe first, okay? Kara, please, you just have to breathe.”

But Kara shakes her head furiously, her mouth trembling, her voice an incomprehensible whine. “No no no, you don’t understand, I-I was too late, Alex, it’s over, I was too _ late.” _

“Too late for what?” Alex ducks her head as if trying to catch a clear look of the hysteria swimming in Kara’s eyes, sighing with worry. “Look, you need to relax first, okay? I’m gonna get you some water, just sit down?”

When Alex attempts to guide Kara over to one of the barstools, Kara rips herself from her sister’s grip, pacing manically to the window and pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes.

“No, no, no, Alex I ruined it, you should have seen the look on her face, I messed up, oh god I messed up.”

Alex just follows, exasperated with worry. “Look, whatever happened, I’m sure—”

A violent sob hiccups from Kara’s mouth and her face crumples even further, and all of a sudden Kara’s on the floor on her knees, back against the wall, face buried in her arms. “Oh god, she hates me now, she has to. Alex, what if I never see her again? It’s over, no, it can’t be — _ no, _ I think it is, Alex—”

Alex drops to her sister’s side, squeezing her shoulder in an attempt to ground her, not with enough force to hurt but enough to rattle her frame and knock her off her rambling trajectory. “Kara, you need to take a deep breath. Look at me, look at my face. Just breathe with me, okay? Just like this.”

The heaves of Kara’s chest still wobble and are jerky and uneven as she holds her sister’s gaze, her eyes wide, puffy and red, mouth twisted down and quivering. But soon enough, through only the sound of their mismatched breathing patterns, they slowly merge together, come down to a synchronized, instrumental harmony, a tune of depleted devastation.

“There,” Alex sighs, her grip loosening. “Is that better?”

But, slowly, Kara shakes her head, and though she’s no longer in a storm of hysterics, the only change is that the misery dripping down her face has found its focus, Kara is centered in her sorrow. 

“I ruined it,” Kara repeats quietly. “I always knew I would ruin it.”

“What happened? I thought you two talked? Sam said you spent the night together.”

The thudding, horrible terror comes creeping up in her chest again like something far more dangerous than an old enemy, like a new foe that’s learned just where her breaking point is, her Achilles heel. 

But in the wake of such a glass-like panic comes only a hollow exhaustion far more tiring than insomnia.

Kara hangs her head low, her throat closed up and dry. “It’s over. It’s just… it’s over.”

January 5th: Day 727

“She’ll come around.”

Kara doesn’t answer.

“You just have to give her some time, obviously. Of course she’s mad, I mean we all knew it’d come to this, but you know, maybe in a couple weeks or something, she’ll get over it.”

This is quiet.

“Kara?”

She glances up from the bar coaster she’s been staring at for the last seven minutes, meets Lucy’s tentative, searching gaze. They’re at Roulette, and Kara’s only twenty minutes into her shift. There’s a small scatter of patrons, just the early evening drinkers that nurse their beverages alone at the bar. They never are here for conversation or fun, just seeking a place to escape, a place to be alone without admitting it.

Kara never understood it before, what the point was of coming to a place like this by yourself, just to not talk to anyone and sip at overpriced liquor. But maybe it’s because she’s never had a spot of her own like that, never thought to have somewhere she could escape to when the rest of the world was unforgiving and cruel.

She never did, before.

Where does one go, exactly, to find a place like that? 

She looks to Lucy. “Thanks. I’ll figure it out.”

The article goes live tomorrow. Kara’s pretty sure Andrea’s ignoring her, the last fourteen messages she’s left have gone unanswered, and all six times that she’s stopped by CatCo to try and talk to her have led to nothing. If Kara were more paranoid, she’d think Andrea goes so far as to sneak out her balcony window just so her office only looks empty when Kara gets so far as to pokes her head in before her assistant sends her off.

No, she’s not paranoid, there wouldn’t be enough space for worrying like that. Kara’s just too consumed with bleary-eyed, tight-throat loathing to do anything but nod and smile.

Lucy nudges Kara’s elbow. “It gets easier, you know. I know it sucks now but whatever happens, with time, it’ll just… it’ll pass.”

Kara crosses her arms, eying down the bar and checking for anyone who needs a refill or attention and finding nothing.

“What if she doesn’t come back?”

Lucy sucks in her bottom lip, giving Kara an apprehensive look. “Then maybe that’s for the best. Cut off cold turkey, y’know? If she doesn’t come back, then… maybe she’s not supposed to.”

Like some ugly fate that’s pre-written for her, like Kara’s decisions never had much of their own agency, like she doesn’t have to hold herself accountable because this is what was already in store for her. Kara wants to ask, what’s the point of destiny if it just leaves her with this? A sticky, hot, and dizzying apathy that makes her hands tingly and numb, her face only a mask of someone else, what’s the point of losing the only thing that’s ever made her want to fight for more?

Kara gives Lucy a cold, marble smile.

❛❛ ❜❜

Lena shows up at the bar two hours later with a lazy, impressionless smile.

It doesn’t look anything like hope, Kara’d never dream of pretending it does.

Whatever piece of her heart that Kara had given Lena, whatever piece of herself, like some trembling offer for a glory she could never afford, a bid that Lena accepted with beautifully open arms but probably never should have — Lena leaves this with Kara now as she walks, spits it to her feet like she never wanted it. She leaves it like old takeout that was never very good to begin with, like there was no point in holding on to it in the first place.

When Lena leaves, she leaves Kara behind, and Kara never needs to wonder if she’ll come back.

January 9th: Day 723

Kara’s back thuds against the wall, the back of her head smacking against the plaster with enough force that her vision blurs with hazy, glistening spots.

A hand thrusts against her chest, a sharp jab. “You must have one thick fucking skull to show your face here again.”

Kara blinks the dizziness away before she meets Veronica’s sharp glare, a challenge to stand against it. But it feels like it’s been ages since Kara had any fight left in her, and she slumps back against the wall.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? You’re _ sorry? _ ” Veronica’s scoff is livid and poisonous. “Try telling that to the thousands of dollars my business is going to lose now that my clientele no longer trusts coming to an establishment that puts a fucking reporter behind the bar. Try telling that to _ her. _” Veronica winds back, cocking her jaw. “No, I can’t do jack shit with sorry.”

“V, come on.” Lucy tries to slip between them, inches into the minimal space separating them. “You’ve known Kara for years, she didn’t—”

Veronica swivels to the other bartender with a sneer. “If you like your job and don’t want to be dragged out by security with her, then I highly suggest you disinvolve yourself.”

In another light, the slow, tentative steps that Lucy takes back from the pair would be comedic. A nervous pull of her mouth, defensively raised hands, Kara almost laughs.

A finger digs into her sternum, and Kara forgets the joke.

She’s never been one to stand up to Veronica, never saw much of a point. Veronica can be abrasive and cold, every consonant that clicks with her tongue is a slicing chance to whip the recipient into compliance, it’s her tactic. It’s just like, cool. Veronica’s always right, that’s just the way it goes. Kara’s fine with that, she knows Veronica has an actual heart somewhere in there, she’s had Kara’s back enough times for Kara to know that the club owner cares about her people, that she even considers them her people at all. Veronica’s loyalty is unmatched, and Kara respects that, admires it from the perspective of someone who probably won’t ever know how to achieve that kind of nobility.

Kara exhales, matching Veronica’s stampeding ferocity with muted vacancy. “I just came to pick up my paycheck,” she says. “You can mail the next two.”

“Was it worth it?”

Kara’s gaze drops.

“What was it, money? Fame? You just wanted attention?” Veronica scoffs darkly, looking Kara over with wrinkled disgust. “I’m just curious, Danvers, how much does it take to buy you out, turn you against the only person who ever thought you were worth anything?”

Kara laughs under her breath as she meets Veronica’s eye again, smiling despite the wrecking void in her chest. “Of course it wasn’t worth it. Is that what you want to hear?”

Veronica doesn’t entertain her challenging tone. “I made you a promise, and I intend to keep that. You’re done.”

“I know. I’m just here to pick up the check and go.”

“Oh, no,” Veronica laughs, contempt like venom. “I mean that when you come crawling back to this industry because you don’t know the first thing about integrity and you’ve built all your dreams on betrayal — you have lost so much more than here, I will make sure you never find work anywhere else in this city, so help me god you are finished.”

Veronica grits her teeth, stepping back with a brisk, warning scowl. “Get your shit and get out.”

There’s no room for regret when the universe comes to its collapse, no space for the panic of chaos, not when it’s her own doing. Kara can’t afford much, certainly not the privileged expense of salvation, that’s a loan she’ll never be approved for.

She already owes accountability, and anything less wouldn’t only be pathetic, it’s just insulting to the very person she’s racked up a bill with.

Maybe she’s not meant for anything more, maybe she’s just a tic on a passage of time, maybe it never mattered what she did, she just existed to be a footnote of someone else’s growth, as just a plot device for a grander plan, expendable, weaponized, and irrelevant after all that’s done has come to pass.

Kara will bear the weight of her undoing, because it was all done at her own hand, and no one else should be expected to shoulder her pathetic mistakes.

❛❛ ❜❜

Alex picks her up just shy of midnight.

She bursts in through the bar door with a frown set like stone, but when her eyes land on Kara’s slumped backside, the sharp edge dulls.

When she slips into the barstool beside her sister, Kara lifts her head up from her arms, and with red-rimmed eyes, a soft hiccup of a cry escapes her mouth, and she hides her face in her hands again.

“What’re you doing here?” Kara groans, her words thick and slurred.

“You think every bartender in our neighborhood doesn’t have my number? Dan called me.” She juts her chin at the man behind the bar polishing glasses, and he gives a nod as their eyes meet.

“God.” Kara swipes her hands down, rubbing her sniffling nose. “I’m sorry, Alex, you shouldn’t — I’m sorry, I just, I couldn’t, I couldn’t stop _ thinking _ and it wouldn’t — it wouldn’t turn _ off, _ I’m sorry, you shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t have called you, I’m—”

“Hey.” Alex’s hand falls to her elbow, her smile light and patient. “It’s okay, I get it. Not about to judge.”

Kara’s skeptical eyebrow raise is jerky, her eyes clouded. “You’re not?”

“I mean, we’re definitely gonna talk about this tomorrow. You haven’t drank since college, so, I might need to play shrink for a minute. But actually, I never thought I’d be giving anyone an intervention, so I am kind of excited about it.”

Kara doesn’t laugh or smile, just turns forward again and reaches for her half-empty, watered-down drink. Alex doesn’t stop her.

“Have you um, have you heard from her? Since Sunday, I mean?”

Her name isn’t said, but Kara hears an echo of that disassembled voice all the same, can still see the hollowed disappointment of her parted mouth, but when Kara clenches her eyes shut, they only ring louder and paint more shamelessly against her eyelids, and the dizziness of failure is unfamiliar and impossible to wrap her head around.

Kara presses the heels of her palms into her eye sockets, _ pressing _ because she just wants to make it all _ stop. _

“No,” she answers thickly, dropping her hands and rubbing her wet nose against her sleeve. “And please don’t try ‘n tell me I will.” 

“I won’t.”

A silence passes.

Kara finishes her drink and fumbles for her wallet, picks through the crumpled bills, fishing through what little cash she has left since her last shift at Roulette. 

“Look,” Alex starts once Dan’s scooped up Kara’s payment and leaves them alone again. “Maybe you can’t make her forgive you, but you’re gonna have to forgive yourself eventually.”

Kara lets out a droll, drunken laugh, her self-deprecating grin lopsided and weak. “And what if I don’t want to?”

And then, quieter, “Not like I’d deserve it.”

“Listen to me.” Alex pulls her by the arm, tugging her to face her head-on and trying to capture Kara’s direct attention, even as her head lolls over her shoulders like sitting upright is just as hard as dealing with the guilt. “You’re not a bad person for what happened. I know it sucks right now, I know you’re heartbroken, but don’t you dare say you deserve this. You are the kindest, most selfless person I know. Like okay, yeah, you made a mistake, but not for one second was it ever for yourself. Don’t say that, don’t say that about my sister, because she deserves so much more than this cheap fucking world could ever have to offer her.”

Kara’s tongue pokes stickily around her mouth, her eyes wandering as they try to pinpoint their target, she nods along as if Alex has just recited their grocery list, like she’s listening to a different beat of dialogue altogether.

Alex lets go of her arm, and Kara blinks sluggishly. “Can we go home now?”

This is temporary.

February 3rd: Day 698

“Hey, how was work?”

Kara drops her messenger bag in a heap by the door, this old, cheap thing Alex had picked up from a thrift store two days after she started at CatCo, a welcoming present, a greeting handshake that introduced her only to sour agitation.

Kara knows she’s supposed to be touched, grateful. She pretends she is, pretends she knows how to be, pretends like if she wanted this job in the first place, then it would mean something to her.

Understanding _ meaning _ itself might just be a pipe-dream fantasy at this point.

Kara brushes passed Alex without a glance, drops to the dining table where she left her laptop this morning. “It was fine.”

“So, it’s going well so far?”

“Yep.”

As her computer boots up, Kara looks up from the dark screen to find Alex worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, watching Kara like a bomb that needs to be defused.

It’s unnecessary. Defusing would imply there’s something left to subdue.

“It was fine,” Kara repeats, a sharper, more annoyed edge to her tone at her sister’s persistent stare. “I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

Alex doesn’t take the bait for a fight. If Kara were paying attention, this would remind her of another dynamic, another lifetime when the tables were turned.

“Did you finish that story you were working on?” Alex asks instead. “The political one?”

Kara bites a laugh, shaking her head as she logs into her account. “Political, right. You mean did I find out if the mayor was actually sleeping with his assistant? Yeah, I did, and he is. Big story.”

Alex seems to be wavering between two choices, teetering on a fragile line, one that Kara dares her to cross.

She does, naturally. Alex always does.

“Why’d you even take the job?” Alex asks tiredly, all the facade of delicate patience slipping away. “You’re obviously not happy there.”

“Yeah, right, ‘cause what the hell would I have to be happy about?”

Kara probably could have said anything, and Alex would’ve stood by her, consoled her through anything. 

But this is Alex’s forbidden line, one Kara storms right over.

Her face hardens, her eyes glinting with steel, the kind of challenge Alex hasn’t brought out against Kara in so long.

“What do you have to be happy for?” Alex echoes with crestfallen, bitter disappointment. “You really have the nerve to ask me that?”

Ignoring her, Kara turns away, but her computer is low on battery and offers little for distraction. As she pushes off from the table for the living room, Alex follows like a persistent, nagging insect she can’t swat away.

“What happened to all we need is each other?” Alex continues hotly as Kara rummages through the blankets on the couch for her charger, finding it beneath one of the cushions. “What happened to the Kara that said no matter what happened, nothing else mattered? Because last I checked, we’ve still got a roof over our heads, and for the first time in nearly a year we both have jobs. We’re still here, _ I _ am _ here. _ Your friends are _ here _. We can pay bills on time, we can afford fucking Starbucks and your favorite Chinese takeout.”

Kara ducks her head as she shoulders passed Alex again, sticking the plug into the wall by the window and looping the chord back to her computer as if there’s no one there at all, and Alex rushes on with the senseless spirit of someone arguing with a wall.

“Okay, this is done. I am done walking on eggshells, okay? We all are. I get you’re hurting, and I’ve given you time to grieve that without prodding, without making you talk about Lena—”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“—Without bugging you about the drinking, without forcing you to stay for game night—”

“I had a story to finish.”

“There’s always a story!” Alex snaps with a booming finality that, in any other world, would leave Kara cowering.

It’s not that she doesn’t understand, it’s that she doesn’t want to.

“But I have let it slide. This pity party of yours has gone uninterrupted.”

“My, my pity party?” Kara laughs in affronted disbelief.

“Who are you right now?” Alex asks bewilderedly, as desperate as she is lost. “Because Kara Danvers never lost sight of what matters.”

Kara rolls her eyes, rising from her chair. “She does when there’s not actually a point to any of this.”

“There’s a point to appreciating what you still have, because even when we were at our lowest, you always had hope, and that's exactly what got us through the worst of it.”

Kara sighs as she pulls open the fridge, gaze skimming for anything to drink. “Hope is naive.”

“Well the Kara Danvers that I—”

“Kara Danvers _ sucks _ right now,” Kara shouts as she slams the refrigerator door shut with a whirl, eyes flaring with barely contained, bitter wrath. “As a reporter, I’m great. As a reporter, I can actually do something right, make an income, satisfy my boss. So, if I could choose to have a real job that doesn’t make me a loser, why would I ever choose to be the sad bartender girl whose heart got broken? I don’t like that girl, Alex.”

Alex steps forward. “I know it hurts, okay but—”

“No, no you don’t know anything!” Kara recoils, shaking. “You’ve _ never _ had to live with a decision like this.”

The animosity has faded, Alex is softer now. “But I do. I do know.”

Alex doesn’t say it to win something in her favor, but the reminder of the last few suffocating years, of all the havoc they’ve both wreaked on each other, of how much Alex has tried and hurt and lost — this yanks Kara back, like chains from under the water.

“I know,” Alex continues, emphatic. “But just, just talk to me so I can help you at least get over her—”

“Get over her?” Kara turns with an indignant scoff, but it’s wet, a burn picks up behind her eyes too quickly for her to stifle, her voice thick. “You think I want to get over her?

“You can’t just keep punishing yourself.” Alex takes another step towards her, gaze searching. “I need you to trust me on this one, it’ll eat you alive.”

Jaw clenched, refusing to look Alex in the eye, Kara stares sightlessly at the floor, her fists stiff at her side and chest pounding.

“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.”

Alex reaches for Kara’s tight knuckles, just a hand to hold. “I know. But just, you can start by _ talking _ to me.”

Alex gets so far as a finger looped beneath Kara’s, opening her hand, before Kara retracts, flinching away like the touch burns far deeper than the skin. Kara staggers away, almost like she’s shivering, and she scrapes her hands back through her hair.

She scoops her bag clumsily from off the floor. “I don’t have time for this right now, I-I have work to do.” 

Just as she’s lifting the tapestry that separates her room from the living area, Alex interrupts her. 

“Kara Danvers is my favorite person. She saved my life every day with all that hope. I never needed a reporter, I just needed my sister who believed in me, because it’s thanks to _ her _ that I didn’t lose myself. So just, think about that while you’re trying to get rid of her.”

The conflict of vacant disregard poses just as great an enemy as the gasping punch of loss. It’s not for a person, not even for a time. Kara has never felt so intractably far away, so high above this scene, so detached, so physically lost from her own body. It’s nothing to do with the job, with _ her. _

It’s a feeling, a bone-deep instinct that served Kara as a guiding hand through this turbulent life, a foundation as seamless as the air, one that would never be noticed until it was gone.

The scorching horror of hurting someone else, as devastating as that is, there’s just no rulebook for how to handle the nauseating self-hatred that comes when everything else has already passed. The door’s closed, that house has long since emptied out. The first blow is over, the residual shocks have faded, of course Kara knows this can only go on for so long.

But no one ever explains how to build something back up from nothing, and the only thing Kara’s unsure of is why she should try when she knows that feeling might never come back.

February 27th: Day 674

Alex still tries every night for weeks to urge Kara out of her lonely self-isolation, to coax her out of her room or out the house.

It’s as noble as it is fruitless.

Except one night, she doesn’t. 

She goes straight to her room, and if Kara were stronger, if she weren’t so fixated on her own revulsion with herself, she might have taken a moment to wonder why.

But she doesn’t, and Alex doesn’t offer an answer to a question Kara’s failed to ask.

March 13th: Day 659

_ “And? How was she?” _

Kara shrugs even though she can’t see her, shouldering through the glass double-doors onto the street outside, squinting as she turns into the harsh city wind.

“She was nice, yeah.”

_ “Yes, that’s usually a requirement for the job.” _

A low snort, Kara rolls her eyes. “Okay, fine, I liked her. She didn’t ask too many questions, which was a nice surprise.”

_ “No, not all psychiatrists answer a question with a question. Hollywood’s been lying to you, unfortunately.” _

“Oh, but you so do that,” Kara laughs. “Alex asks what kind of pizza you want and you’ll ask for a full statistical report on how likely she is to follow through before you even agree to come over.”

_ “Can you blame me? She never gets what I ask for.” _

“Kelly, you always ask for Hawaiian. Even I think it’s gross, which is really saying something.”

Kelly huffs indignantly, but before Kara can end the call, can thank her for checking in or whatever, Kelly turns their conversation back around.

_ “So. Did you get around to talking about her?” _

Swallowing, Kara’s fingers tighten around her phone, she doesn’t need to ask who she means. “A little.”

There’s a brief pause, as if an expectation for more. _ “You know you are always welcome to tell me to mind my own business.” _

Kara nods, even if it’s mostly for her own self-assurance. “No, um, it’s fine. Yeah, I was kinda vague on the details but… I mean, it was all just an introductory session. You probably know better than I do. Dr. M’orzz just wanted to get to know me, find out about my life, what brought me in today.”

_ “And?” _

Kara rounds a bend on the sidewalk, the CatCo building coming into view, and she slowly, anxiously lags to a stop, staring at the gray, nightmarish chrome and glass of its teetering loom. Long gone is that elated, child-like excitement for all her dreams coming true, long gone is the anticipatory pride of how far she’s come. Because all that remains is the backlash choke of dread, an anxiety Kara’s not used to when it comes to work, one that smells a lot more like losing something instead.

“And… I feel like I could probably go the rest of the year without talking about myself ever again,” Kara finishes with a sigh, her shoulders dropping. 

_ “Trust me, I know. Are you seeing her again?” _

Kara starts walking again. “Yeah, made an appointment for next week.”

_ “Tough luck. You have a lot of talking ahead of you.” _

Despite how each step down the street feels like paddling through slime, Kara manages to let out a light laugh, manages to mean it. “You sure you don’t want to just be my psych yourself?”

_ “While I’d be honored to have you as my first official patient, it’s a conflict of interest, babe. And you know full well that Alex would just bribe me to tell her everything you say.” _

Kara raises her eyebrows as she steps into the lobby of CatCo, directing her focus onto the warm hum of Kelly’s voice in her ear rather than the rising tick of her heart rate as she makes for the elevators. 

“Is it that easy?”

_ “Oh, totally, but Alex could never afford me anyway.” _

Kara laughs, even as her free hand begins to tap nervously at her thigh, an uncertain habit she picked up recently that she didn’t pay much attention to at first, but how she now is hyper aware of how often she does it. But everyone has their thing, a comfort, a grounding anchor to keep from losing their consciousness to somewhere so elusively far away, to keep their mind present, stop it from the reflexive escape. She’s just found hers in the little things, in the drum of her fingertips, in the mindless banter over the phone, in the focal point of the numbers above the elevator doors as she waits on the ground floor, in the cool air-conditioning creeping under the collar of her sweater, in the feeling of her shoes wrapped crisply around her feet, how her trousers fall down her thighs — it’s in the forced presence of this moment, clinging to her senses, it’s this attentional centering that keeps Kara’s thinly-laced seams from untangling entirely.

Kara swallows just as the elevators door part open and the other late-morning workers begin to file ahead of her onto it.

“Hey, Kelly?”

_ “Hm?” _

This is healing, even as pitiful as it is.

Kara smiles just before she steps forward, the first trace of reconciliation, but certainly not the last. 

“Thank you.”

March 16th: Day 656

“I’m sorry, she’s _ suing _ you?”

Kara rolls her eyes, pushing her half-eaten burger around her plate with a fork, picking it apart absently. “Not anymore. But supposedly she tried to. I guess it was about the NDA I signed when I started, she claimed the story I wrote violated it.”

“Has that woman lost her damn mind? But — wait, how do you even know about it?” And then with a small exasperated noise, Alex reaches across the laminate diner table, smacking Kara’s hand to stop her picking. “Stop that, just eat it.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’re always hungry.”

“Fine, I’m working through the five stages of grief. Leave me alone.”

“Jesus,” Alex mutters, rubbing her forehead. “You go to one therapy session and now you’re fucking enlightened. Just eat the burger.”

Rolling her eyes, Kara picks off a piece of the meat with her fingers and chews it lazily. “Satisfied?”

“Hardly. So, did you?”

“Did I what?”

“I mean, did you break the contract? I didn’t think you even mentioned Roulette in it.”

“I talked about meeting her in a bar, I guess. I don’t think it was about the club itself, she just argued that sharing anything I learned about Lena by association with Roulette is a breach, or whatever. She wanted to argue that Lena’s supposed to be protected under the statement.”

“Hey, you’re saying her name now, that’s progress. Can we stop calling her She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named now?”

Kara flicks a fry at her, but Alex only pops it into her mouth. 

“So, hold on, I still don’t get how you know about this. I’m assuming she doesn’t have a case?”

“Guess not. Andrea told me about it.”

Alex’s eyebrows rocket up, her hand pausing midair halfway across the table to steal another fry. “Like, Andrea your bitch of a boss?”

“Yep.”

“And why would she know anything about it?”

Kara shrugs, breaking off another nibble of her burger mindlessly. “No idea. She just came up to me this morning, said she took care of my ‘little problem,’ and that Veronica’s dropping it. Honestly, far as I know, Andrea could hundred-percent be bullshitting me for brownie points.”

“Oh.” Alex’s skeptical expression falls, the corners of her mouth pulling down instead with uncertain hesitance before it just morphs into a grimace. “God, I’m still really not used to hearing you swear, it’s like finding out you’re not a virgin all over again.”

“I have some bad news, then.”

Alex gags on Kara’s fries, waving her hands exasperatedly. “Okay, god, I brought that on myself, but stop. Can we just — what were we talking about?”

Kara rolls her eyes, but it’s fond, the edge of her smile feels almost natural, an echo of someone before. “I don’t have much reason to believe her other than, one, it’s totally something Veronica would do, and two, I’m a bit low on the totem pole for Andrea to bother kissing up to me. This is like, the second time we’ve even spoken one-on-one since I started. But, yeah, she said she and the company lawyers took care of it and I have nothing to worry about. So, good for us, I guess.”

Alex grumbles, shaking her head. “You know, it’s pretty fucking fitting that she’s got so many snake tattoos if you ask me.”

“Oh, like Medusa.”

“Yeah, sure, that too.”

“‘Cause you’d turn to stone every time she looked at you.”

“Okay fuck you, I froze _ one _ time, that woman is terrifying.”

“I thought nobody scared you.”

“You know what, I take it back, I hope she runs you bankrupt.”

“Wouldn’t take much, honestly.”

April 17th: Day 624

“Go find out what Lena’s doing.”

A stack of papers drops onto the keyboard in front of Kara, jarring her focus from her computer screen, and she only blinks in surprise. The top of the pile is just a blurry photograph of some industrial building, taken from a distance, an unfocused catch of green from a bush clouding the corner of the picture. It looks to be Spheerical Industries if Kara were to guess, and it shows a line of men in matching uniforms exiting the building with boxes in arms, loading up the back of a van.

Eyebrows knitted, Kara looks up. “Sorry, uh, what?”

Andrea snaps her fingers with an impatient wave. “Lena Luthor, Danvers. Keep up. She bought out her family’s company last month, and she’s leaving for Metropolis tomorrow.”

Something like the trickle of sand at the back of her mouth, a tickle of discomfort just out of reach, Kara bites the inside of her cheek. She lifts up the photograph, and the one beneath is a similar shot, but this time the van doors are closed, and a tall, angular woman is signing a tablet, wearing a loose, dark trench coat that flaps in the breeze, her fair hair crisply wound atop her head.

Kara’s never met her, but she’d recognize Lillian Luthor anywhere.

She flips for the third, and the ice-cold drench of despair that Kara expects never comes. Lena’s blurry figure is revealed, her hands on her hips and frowning up at her mother, wearing pressed slacks and a dark, matching blouse — no, instead of the freezer-burn taste of melancholy longing, Kara finds only the stutter of a heartbeat she thought had long since died.

Not like the rush of a pulse when she steps into CatCo, not like the patter of her fingers against her thigh, not like the whiplash of her mind whisking away from this vessel, no, it’s not like that at all.

Kara can’t make out much, it’s just a quick, crude shot typical for paparazzi. And so maybe she’s imagining it, but Kara swears she can see the pinched wrinkle of Lena’s brow, the petulant pout of her mouth, the stubborn square of her shoulders, she looks so much younger than Kara remembers.

Youth, yeah. That’s it, that’s the steady thrum under the skin of her wrists, in her arteries and veins. Like a reminder, like as close to closure as she might ever get.

Kara blinks back up at Andrea, suddenly finding herself so much less afraid.

“If you think she’ll agree to an interview with me, you’re gonna be really disappointed.”

Andrea leans against the edge of Kara’s desk and crosses her arms. “You’re right. You wouldn’t believe the number of favors I had to call in for this, but I just got off the phone with her Lillian and she’s squeezing us in, so I came to ask — you know her friends, don’t you?”

The blanket of serenity falls away, and Kara frowns. “Her… friends?”

“Yes, coworkers and the sort. Your sister works there, doesn’t she? Use her to get you inside and ask around, try and get a few quotes from any of the staff Lena works most with before the interview, the ones you mentioned before. But be subtle about it, will you? Lillian was rather insistent that we don’t overstay our welcome, so. Go on.” Andrea gives a dismissive wave. “That’ll be all. Meeting’s at three p.m., move along.”

Andrea claps her hands against her thighs with a placid, manicured smile before she scoots off the desk and turns around. Her heels tap against the thinly carpeted floors all the way back to her office, as dull as it is through the keyboard clacks and chatter of the open office. Her footsteps fade like an echo that only Kara can listen to, hearing nothing else, until Andrea disappears behind her glass doors, and Kara snaps back.

Flustered, fingertips cold, Kara pushes her glasses up her nose as she looks down to her watch. It’s already one in the afternoon, and Spheerical Industries is at least a fifteen minute commute. With how last-minute her notice is, that might be enough time for Kara to tap out a decent list of interview questions on her phone while squeezing into the back corner of the subway car.

Relevant questions, necessary ones regarding the purchase of a company and an abrupt relocation. Nothing like, _ I miss you, _ nothing like, _ please don’t go, _ and of course nothing that could ever sound even remotely like, _ if it makes a difference, I still love you. _

Not only does Kara’s hand drum against her leg but her foot bounces on the elevator, the soul tapping against the floor, and the arm that’s draped her coat over shakes underneath it. Her teeth would be chattering if not for the cruel clench of her jaw that her dentist will definitely have plenty to say about.

She makes it as far as the street before the wall of the outside air smacks her from her reverie, and Kara stops, slowly awakening from a dream she spent far too long dawdling in.

Two minutes and seventeen seconds later, Kara is pushing back into Andrea’s office.

“Why are you so obsessed with her?” she asks with the precise intrigue only the heart of a reporter could wield.

“Excuse me?” Andrea’s mouth parts open in unimpressed shock, she looks up at Kara like she’s lost her mind.

But maybe Kara never had it in the first place, and that doesn’t change how this still might be the first step to ascension.

“The only thing you’ve ever wanted from me is her,” Kara goes on, taking calculated steps into the lofty office. “Talk to her, spy on her, press her for anything I can convince her to tell me. I gave you the biggest story this company has posted in years, and it wasn’t enough. I ruined my life for you, and you couldn’t even care less, you just want to see how many times I’ll roll over and do it all again.”

But Andrea just laughs like she’s embarrassed for her. She drops her pen on her desk and leans back in her white leather throne, crossing her legs with the confident disdain only a billionaire can master.

“I ruined your life?” Andrea repeats with a blood-red smirk. “You’re still on about that one? Oh, sweetheart, I don’t know how hard you must have hit your head, but I _ saved _ you. You do realize all that I’ve done for you? If it weren’t for me, you’d still be taking orders from arrogant megalomaniacs who have nothing better to spend their money on than frivolous entertainment. Darling, you didn’t know what you wanted, you should be thanking me for going ahead with that story.”

Kara’s fingers stop tapping, the thud of the cosmos quiets at last. 

She sighs, not like letting go, but like she’s finally found something to hold onto.

“Well, I guess not much has changed for me, then.” 

Andrea raises her eyebrows, and Kara smiles.

“Yeah, I quit.”

It’s not until much later that day that Kara considers she maybe should have found out how long her dental coverage lasts first.

May 18th: Day 593

“So no, she didn’t ever get the lawsuit claim filed, but she absolutely held through on her promise.”

“Which was?”

“To make sure I never work in a restaurant again. Do you have any idea how much retail property she owns?”

Dr. M’orzz purses her lips, leaning her elbow into the armrest of her office chair, her loose, dark hair hanging down over the front of one shoulder. “Another no, then?”

Scrunching her mouth, Kara looks off to the side. “Yeah, right. That’s assuming any of them call me back at all. You know, most my old jobs don’t even answer? I spent over a decade polishing my resumé, there was a time I could have any bartending gig I wanted, I have possibly the _ best _ experience someone my age could possibly have, and now I’d be lucky if Chick-Fil-A hired me to mop their floors.”

“I don’t think you would enjoy Chick-Fil-A.”

A snort under her breath, Kara shakes her head. “Probably not, but I will seriously take just about anything at this point. You know I spent all of last week responding to Craigslist ads?”

“That’s still running?”

“Oh, trust me, it,” Kara laughs. “It’s mostly weird kink stuff. Do you know what axillism is?”

“A sexual desire based around one’s axilla.”

“Their armpit. They literally want to have sex with your armpit.”

A small smirk finally breaks. “Yes.”

“That’s what Craigslist’s like today. You know how much they’re willing to pay for that? Twenty bucks!” Kara collapses back into the couch. “God, I’ve learned so much.”

“Well, at least unemployment is proving to be educational.” At Kara’s incredulous laugh, the doctor’s smile splays softer, and she sits up straighter. She rolls up her sleeves before she caps her pen shut and clasps her hands over her white legal pad. “Alright, for the sake of speculating — if you could truly never bartend again, as you say is the case, then what else can you do?”

“I mean, that’s my point, I’ve been reaching out for other random jobs on there. Helped a family move into a new place uptown, worked with a retired professor to start a tomato garden on his roof. Did some last-minute flower deliveries and helped a bunch of middle schoolers hang up flyers all over the city for their musical. Oh, I got my hair cut by a student in cosmetic school. That one was cool, I needed a haircut anyway, and she gave me a fifteen-dollar voucher for Big Belly Burger, too.”

“Sounds like Craigslist is useful for quite a bit more than you give it credit for.”

“God,” Kara groans, leaning forward into her hands. “If I’d known Veronica literally had her hand in the pocket of every restaurant owner in the city, I never would’ve quit CatCo.”

To this, Dr. M’orzz gives a true laugh. “Yes, you would have.”

But Kara hesitates. “You think I wouldn’t’ve stayed?”

Narrowing her eyes with curious regard, the doctor exhales before she turns around in her chair, bringing her computer monitor back to life. “This is our last session, you said?”

Kara leans back again, grazing her hand back and forth lazily along the armrest. “Yeah, my health insurance runs out next week.”

Dr. M’orzz swipes through a few screens, clicking her tongue under her breath, before she finds what she’s looking for, and she angles the screen more towards Kara, gesturing for her to sit forward and pointing to a lined graph.

“Alright, you see this?” She indicates the starting point of the graph, where a splay of dots begin low on the scale. “This is from when you first started seeing me in March.”

“Sorry, uh, what am I looking at?” Kara tilts her head like the angle might make a difference.

“The surveys I have you complete before every session, rating your mood on various scales?”

“Oh, yeah. By the way, that’s a really dumb system. Why isn’t there an option between ‘not at all’ and ‘several days’? What if I had trouble falling asleep for like, just two days in one week? Am I supposed to put several days, or not at all? Because two days really isn’t several.”

She levels Kara with slack-jawed patience, her smile even and waiting. 

Kara drops her shoulders, ducks her chin. “Sorry. Proceed.”

“Your answers all translate to a number, which adds up to one general score for that week. We usually consider between ten and seventeen as mild to moderately depressed, and anything above as moderate to severe.”

“Okay.” Kara squints to read the graph. “Where was I at?”

“A thirty-four.”

She kind of expects it to be a joke, for Dr. M’orzz to add a dismissive wave and zoom in on the scale, show her the right number, but she doesn’t, and Kara laughs awkwardly. “Ha, um, cool. Did I, uh, did I break your fancy scale?”

“No, but it was clearly cause for concern, and I could see why Dr. Olsen referred you.”

“Kelly’s pretty smart, yeah. So, um, where am I now?”

Dr. M’orzz turns back to the screen, and she drags a bracket to extend the graph’s period, humming under her breath. “Well, the first month, you didn’t fluctuate very much. You were fairly consistent within the same range. And then these last four weeks, your numbers began to slope down. The survey you submitted for this week was at fourteen.”

“Oh.” Kara braces her elbows over her knees, nodding dumbly. “Kudos to you, then. Sounds like you really know what you’re doing.”

Her smile is fostering, gentle. “You started making dramatic improvements when you resigned from CatCo.”

Kara’s been working on this whole grounding thing, a new technique. Otherwise, it’s just all too easy to lose herself in the dusty wisp of oblivion, in the blur of detachment.

Dr. M’orzz’s office is all light, gentle colors, the walls a faded robin blue, the carpet a rich, creamy bronze like latte foam. Kara’s always liked it here, enjoys all the various, sloping contrasts to look at, images to cling to when she feels herself slipping away. The crisp texture of the floor like curly bristles, the smooth wavy grains of the yellow pine desk, the jostled papers tucked into every which corner of it, the white screen of the computer monitor that’s usually dark and would reflect back a faint silhouette of Kara’s face, the picture frames highlighting a smiling family Kara will never meet, the scatter of pens, a small maroon dish holding paper-clips, coins and a Chapstick, the abstract and incredibly detailed paintings hanging on the wall, the scratch of precisely random brush strokes and chaotically organized splashes of color, the coastal wood that frames these eclectic artworks — the small, pressed smile of Dr. M’orzz’s face.

Kara blinks. “Sorry, what?”

“You have made admirable progress in such a short time, and it’s been a pleasure to have been beside you for it. While I would love to take credit for that, I can’t. I haven’t told you anything you didn’t already know. No, I don’t think you would have stayed in your job, because from everything you’ve told me… you’re a survivor, Kara. It’s what you’re exceptional at, it’s an ingrained skill that doesn’t come naturally to most. I have no doubt you would have left CatCo, and you never needed me to tell you that.”

Kara focuses on the dark spirals ingrained into the wooden desk. “But that’s kind of reductive to say about me, isn’t it? I mean, what have I been through that’s so unsurvivable? I still have so much.”

“It’s not about what you survived,” she laughs like Kara’s being rhetorical, and she shuts her folder closed. “It’s how. We all have something we’re afraid of facing. You and I have spent a collective of nine hours together, and everything you have told me indicates only one thing.”

“Which is what?”

“You know your way. You know what you need, and when it comes down to it, you _ will _ fight for it. And that is all surviving is, isn’t it? To keep going, to move on from the things that hurt us?”

“So when does it stop hurting?” Kara asks thickly, knowing three minutes isn’t enough to magically unveil a truth she can live with. “Is this really supposed to be progress? Because it doesn’t feel like it. When do I get to the part where I can miss her without it hurting so much? When do I get to the part where I stop feeling like my life isn’t actually going anywhere?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“Can’t you just tell me? I know backwards riddles are probably part of your job, but we really don’t have time for one of those.”

“Exactly. It’s just time, Kara. It’s not a riddle. You can keep coming every week for another year if you’d like, and we can keep talking about the new internet fetishes you’ve learned about, whatever job you do or don’t have, how often you still think about Lena. But — and I truly don’t say this often — it would be a waste of your money. You know how to heal, you just need to give it time. All you ever needed was to give yourself a little time.”

“So, what, you’re saying my problems aren’t real? That I shouldn’t need someone else to help me?”

“Not at all. I believe you are incredibly self-aware of who you are and what it is you need. Of course I encourage you to continue with any form of counseling if it’s what you want, but you have shown time and time again that you know far better than I do how to help yourself. You said once that you think you’re your own worst enemy, which is true for anyone in a sense, but I also believe you have already equipped yourself with the tools to survive your struggles. You can be your own hero, Kara. I just gave you a space to trust that.”

When their fifty-minute session ends, for the first time Kara finds something almost like peace in her undoing, finds that maybe it’s in that where she can rest.

“So, guess therapy wasn’t all that necessary, then?”

“Oh, no.” Dr. M’orzz laughs as she guides Kara through the door. “I think everyone should go to therapy at some point in their lives. Everyone has shitty damages, and we all struggle to acknowledge them into our adult lives, trust me.” 

Kara pauses in the doorway, smiling like they might be able to share a moment. “Since this is the last time I’ll ever see you—”

“No, Kara, I will not tell you about my damages. Have a good rest of your summer. My door is always open.”

June 2nd: Day 578

The next stable job Kara lands is at a small family restaurant just on the edge of the city, home of the three-dollar margarita. They don’t need a bartender, but they were hiring servers, and Kara’s not in any sort of place to be particular about this.

“Stable” is a loose term, though.

“You know, last time I was here? These things only cost two dollars,” an older woman informs Kara as she sucks on her red straw, slurping the last drops of the pale neon drink from the melted-down ice.

Kara, wearing a scratchy poncho too tight around her neck and a sombrero with a rim of dangling beads that she can never get to stay out of her eyes for long, stands beside the vibrant booth with her hands clasped behind her back, lips pressed into a flat line.

“I think it’s been three dollars for a few years now.”

“Well, it’s just darn rude if you ask me. Tell me what kind of way that is to treat such a loyal group of customers that you must raise the price like that.”

“I mean, if you consider inflation, it’s technically the same—”

“Mm-mm,” the woman hums, setting her glass down before she wipes her thin mouth with a green napkin, picking up the check Kara’s just dropped down. “Regardless, you will at least be taking the steak off, won’t you?”

Kara holds the beads out from her eyes as she knits her eyebrows together in confusion. “The carne asada? Um, may I ask what was—”

“It was undercooked.” Another slurp. 

“I thought… I’m sorry, I thought you asked for it rare?”

“I did, but it was too rare, I could practically hear it still mooing. Now I can hardly stomach that, could you?”

Kara cocks her jaw, glancing down to the plate. “You ate the whole thing.”

“Mhm, and when I come down with some nasty food poisoning tomorrow, you best be sure I’ll call tomorrow to have a word with the manager of this establishment.”

Kara takes the carne asada off the bill, and the woman leaves shortly after. 

She can afford exactly one third of a margarita with the tip left behind.

❛❛ ❜❜

“So, is this like, a family business?” Kara asks idly, spinning in the second leather chair of her manager’s narrow, cramped office.

Snapper, thumbing through the wrinkled green bills and jabbing his meaty fingers at the calculator, grunts. “What? No, started it myself. Took a vacation to Cancún in ‘97, and I realized — there’s nothing people love more than fake exotic shit if it’s sold at a cheap price.”

“Right.” Kara taps her hand against the cracked armrest. “Um, but I mean, are the sombreros really necessary? It’s a bit… offensive, don’t you think?”

“The only people who actually give a damn about that are whining millennials who ruined the age of comedy.” Sighing, Snapper momentarily sets down the cash and levels Kara with a flat, bored expression. “So, tell me now. Are you going to preach about political correctness, or you gonna be grateful, take your pay, and go?”

“Um. Is there a third option?”

Snapper stuffs a small stack of bills into Kara’s hand, and swivels back to his computer, dropping his glasses onto the desk with a light clatter. 

Kara had started to lose count of the number of restaurants she’d applied to. She even got creative, had considered hosting, bussing, food-running, essentially any front-of-house position she could get her hands on. There’d been a brief stunt in a makeup department store that lasted all of six hours and finished when she had told someone it was okay to use a water-based foundation over a silicon-based primer. It’s not like Kara really knew what she was talking about in the first place, but apparently this was too much of a cosmetic faux-paus to overlook, and she didn’t score a second shift. For an entire three days, Kara managed to hold a position working in the paint department at Home Depot, but after ruining her fourth batch of five-gallon paint buckets, that didn’t work out either. After that was Starbucks, and then— 

Okay, the point is, Kara needs this job. This is the longest one she’s held so far, fifteen days and counting.

But she’s just about out the door when she finishes counting her tips, and now she pauses. Hovering the doorway, she chews on the inside of her cheek.

She needs this job. 

The payout for the article has already run out, Kara’s last two paychecks at CatCo were kept as penalty for her breaking her employment contract, and Alex can support them on her pay at SI only for so long. What Kara’s earned from _ Snapito’s Taquitos _ has only been enough to cover the lot of April’s expenses that Alex spotted for her, forget about May, and it’s already June.

Her finger taps against the edge of the wrinkled bills. 

“Hey, um.” Kara turns around, rubbing the paper between the pads of her fingertips anxiously even as her voice remains steady. “I’ve just… I’ve noticed my last few shifts that I’ve been walking home with less than my cashout says I made. I’m sure it’s just a mistake — in the computer, or something.” Kara laughs, dropping a shoulder loosely and leaning against the doorframe. “So I just, I wanted to bring it to your attention, figure out what’s going on?”

Snapper doesn’t turn from his screen. “Ah, you mean the employment tax. Yeah, I dock it from everyone’s pay.”

“Sorry, the what?”

“Employment tax. Restaurant gets a cut for, you know, allowing you on the premises. Consider it like rent.”

“I don’t think that’s… a thing.”

“Yeah? You ever run a business before, Ponytail?”

She really, really needs this job.

Kara glances down again. It’s not — well, it hasn’t been a _ great _ pay, the menu prices aren’t very high and they don’t see all that much business, but that means Kara gets the benefit of working the floor by herself most days, not having to pool her tips with another server. It’s been enough to dampen down the steaming grime of anxiety coating the layers of her stomach, something that’s always been so impenetrable, so forever, yet lately so quiet. 

But she’s been consistently missing nearly twenty percent of her tips every time she leaves, and.

_ You can be your own hero, Kara. _

“You know what?” Kara clears her throat, patting the stack of money against her palm, a wry smile twisting her mouth. “No, that’s— that’s crap. Screw that, I quit.”

Now, Snapper does turn around, his eyebrows bunched so high that the wrinkles of his forehead press together like a stack of worms, mouth flat with the patronizing trademark of someone addicted to their own stagnant, artificial superiority. “You think you can actually quit on me? Just like that?”

Tucking the cash into her pocket, Kara laughs. “Don’t worry. I’ll be sure to let the Department of Labor know you’re so diligently keeping up this ‘employment tax’ of yours.”

“You think anyone else will hire you, Danvers?” Snapper taunts with an incredulous bark of a laugh, but the flush of his ears gives away his embarrassed panic. “You think I don’t know who you are? You’re lucky I took you at all, you’re the bottom of the barrel in this city.”

“You know, it’s funny, that’s what I keep hearing.” Kara backs out the office door with a much more confident, thoughtful glint to her eyes. “But I still always manage to find something.”

Snapper shouts something after her that she doesn’t care to catch, and when Kara pushes out the creaking backdoor exit into a muggy alley, into the thick, sticky midsummer heat, under a sun that spills down on the top of her head like the burn of a halo, Kara can’t help but remember. 

She can’t help but remember a certain natural dominance, a leisurely, supreme influence with every click of heels and every twist of saccharine lips. Kara remembers an effortless poise, a luxurious grin around the ambitious ferocity of a sharp-witted tongue, wonders if this is Lena’s left-behind legacy that lives in with Kara, an eternal inspiration.

Maybe the luxury of time does offer some unforeseen gifts, here and there.

August 29th: Day 490

“I have to be honest about something,” Kara blurts out over the sharp, peppery waft of a caesar salad — the cheapest thing on the menu — that she’s not sure she’s capable of finishing. 

Across the fine white-linen table, in the warm glow of the ambient, overpriced restaurant, Kate Kane raises her eyebrows, and for the first time this evening, her mouth splits into an angled smile.

“Honesty can be fun,” she answers smoothly, leaning back from her own dish, some sort of pasta that Kara can’t pronounce. “Are you really kinky, or something?”

“I—” Kara’s mouth snaps shut on reflex, finding herself grateful for the mood lighting and how it masks the heat slipping up her cheeks. “Do I look like — I mean, why do people always ask me that? Do I give off the—?”

“Mm, not exactly. More that I just wouldn’t be surprised.”

Kara doesn’t see the difference. “Right.”

The short-haired brunette laughs, dropping her cloth napkin beside her near-empty plate and leaning forward on her elbows. “Sorry, I’m just being a dick, ignore me. What’s on your mind?”

“Well, um.” Just as Kara’s fingers start to tap against her knee under the table, she immediately stops, swallowing the inarticulacy, as if the nervous tic in and of itself has become something that’s conditioned her to relax, like an instant sedative.

_ Breathe. _

“I’m really not looking for anything right now,” Kara explains. “I’m sorry, I know I probably should’ve led with that, or something, I’m not sure how the whole blind-date thing works, but, I just kinda got roped into this by my sister? And I didn’t really have any excuses to say no.”

But Kara hasn’t even finished getting her words out before Kate’s waving her off with a full-stomach laugh. “Oh, really, don’t sweat it. I’m not trying to get into anything either.”

“You’re… not?”

Rather than answer, Kate tilts her head and watches Kara curiously. “So, tell me then. You focusing on your career, or are you still hung up on an ex?”

A nervous laugh bubbles from her mouth, and Kara tugs on the collar of her button down, sitting up straighter. She wants to say neither, maybe could say the former, her initial instinct isn’t even about actively avoiding the latter, but—

She is kind of an ex, isn’t she?

Like looking through a window, like observing a scene not meant for her eyes, there’s a squelching twist of discomfort at calling her that. Like it’s disrespectful, like it’s too presumptuous, like it gives Kara so much more credit than it should.

But a first date isn’t really the place to get into that, so.

“Both.” Kara clears her throat, reaching for her wine. “But… mostly the second one.”

Kate hums, her smile growing with a juicier interest that reminds her of Lucy. “Tell me about her.”

Kara almost laughs again, an eruptive, sarcastic squeak of surprise, but it latches in her throat. It’s the automatic deflection, an ingrained reflex to avoid talking about her at all costs. Even saying her name still raises the hairs on the back of Kara’s neck most days. To tell someone about the blade-sharp shutdown of Lena’s face when Kara confessed, to recall the last words she meant for Kara to ever hear, to share the nights when Kara ran so hard and fast from any conscious comprehensibility until she couldn’t think in coherent sentences anymore only to find that heartbreak, longing, and shame are still just as all-encompassing even in fuzzy, disoriented abstractions? 

That’s just asking to undo it all.

Kara opens her mouth to steer them away, whether she’s gonna attempt to be sneaky about it or admit outright that she doesn’t want to talk about it, not her, not now — it doesn’t really matter, it’s whatever works best.

But she draws inspiration from a strength she still remembers so clearly.

“She’s… brilliant.” Kara’s anxiety deflates like storming winds parting for daylight. “Hands down the smartest person I’ve ever met. She can probably do anything she wants with a brain like that, but… she made me think I could too, you know? She doesn’t talk down to people, she doesn’t think her money and genius are enough to put her above anyone else, that’s not how she weighed her relationships. She just saw the world in this beautifully human way, she measured her values in love and kindness, not power and ranking.”

Kara smiles as a red, vixen smile swims in her eyes as a memory that doesn’t suffocate. “But it was also her issue, sometimes, too. She could also just be so brilliantly _ dumb, _ it was always more surprising than anything. She always claimed she was turning over this new leaf, living a minimalist life and not spending money so thoughtlessly for things she didn’t need. I took her to this hole-in-the-wall dumpling joint one time, their deal was like maybe four bucks for six, and she tried to pay with a hundred dollar bill. So, you know, when I explained they wouldn’t take it, she thought I meant it wasn’t enough to cover the bill and she pulled out another. And then, she just didn’t always get it when I didn’t want her to just pay for everything, why it was important to me that we split things.” Kara rolls her eyes, remembering the borderline arguments that were hard for either of them to take very seriously with how they laughed through them, how the catty teasing would inch between them and reduce any severity to just goofy bickering.

“But as oblivious she could be… she just made me see the world in a way I never realized I even could. I used to think I was the one showing her how to appreciate the little things, introducing her to all the cheap deals and unknown places she’d never give a second glance to otherwise, teaching her about coupons and restaurant weeks. But, I don’t know. She just made me believe in myself, and I didn’t even know that I hadn’t been in the first place. She made me start thinking about what I wanted, just for me. She was incredibly selfless and generous, and somehow that taught me to be selfish.”

Kara gets lost somewhere in the mesmerizing swirls of Lena’s aftermath, of what lingers from her wake with Kara now and miraculously doesn’t leave her gasping and broken to think about. Kara immerses herself in how Lena used to lick her lips when she wanted something, even if it wasn’t innately intimate and something as simple as asking to watch a movie together, how Lena was all power poses and cherry-bomb lipstick around anyone else, but with Kara she was loud laughs and unladen foolishness, how Kara would sometimes catch Lena looking at her like Kara never imagined anyone would, not just like she had potential for something greater, but like Kara had already achieved that worthwhile rise to success without some arbitrary career, but for whatever it was that she had brought to Lena’s life, however temporary it might have been.

She knows Lena isn’t coming back, Kara’s known since the moment Lena walked out of Roulette without looking back that it was the end. Kara will never know the solace of that celestial look again, will never see the bleary-eyed drift back from sleep in the early morning with her favorite squinty pout.

“Damn.” Kate leans back in her seat, one elbow propped over the backrest of her seat, eyebrows raised. “How long were you two together?”

“Together? Technically like, eighteen hours. Give or take.”

“Oh, honey no.”

Kara lets out a sheepish laugh, ducking her chin. “I know, I still obviously have feelings for her but, it’s okay. It’s not… it’s not stopping me from living my life anymore, you know?”

She’s not coming back, But Kara can remember it all, every part. She doesn’t have to let that go, it can be hers to keep.

The date flows much easier after that, Kara even takes Kate to her favorite ice cream shop after. Going home once the night is over, it’s with a greater peace Kara thought she’d ever manage to find.

September 29th: Day 459

There are setbacks, obviously.

The first night Kara sees Lena onscreen with a blonde that’s not her on her arm, Kara watches the foundation she’s rebuilt her stability on these last nine months tremble. A rush of cosmic pressure wells behind the dam, and Kara can only stare at the screen.

Lena’s immaculate smile, the crinkle of her eyes, the fluidity of her wave to an adoring crowd.

An arm around her waist, an unheard whisper of words as an unnamed woman leans into Lena’s ear, the inaudible laugh, Lena’s mouth dropping open and her eyes squeezing shut.

The TV clicks off, and Kara purses her lips, looking up at her sister’s apprehensive guilt as she comes into view.

“You never actually canceled our cable, did you?” Kara asks flatly. 

“Okay, I did for like three months, to be fair. But then I missed watching SNL live.”

Something far more foreign than panic pierces between Kara’s ribs, nothing that tastes even like jealousy, but more that same old, creepy uncertainty resurfacing about, what if, really—

_ There’s not actually a point to any of this. _

This feels more like a test than it should. Kara can almost see Dr. M’orzz’s knowing smile, the encouraging wave, as if she’s just urging Kara to rip off a band-aid, and not like Kara’s seeing a face that she’s lived so much longer without than actually with.

“Are you okay?” Alex asks, sinking slowly onto the couch wearily. “Do you need some tequila shots, bottle of wine? I can call Lucy.”

Staring still at the blank static of the screen, Kara’s answer feels distant and far away. “Lucy’s not allowed to have tequila for two weeks.”

“Uh, why?”

“She called her ex at Margarita Night last week. We put her on probation.”

“Oh. Sounds about right.”

Vulnerability is so bitter against the inside of Kara’s cheek, rotten when she bites down to keep it all in. It’s not about who witnesses the break, it’s not about the display of how this bothers Kara when all she wants is to just be happy for Lena and whoever she’s found now — because she is, she is, of course she is — but more just a fear of showing it to herself, of admitting the part of her that selfishly doesn’t want to think of Lena being with anyone else, that this part of her exists at all.

But looking at Lena now, watching the revering public and limitless respect from a society that Lena only ever wanted to help? 

Being afraid of her own greedy heart becomes an afterthought, and Kara finds strength in unclenching her jaw to relax into this.

“I mean, if it’s any consolation,” Alex goes on. “She kinda looks like you.”

“You think?”

“Well, they all do.”

Kara turns from the TV, raises her eyebrows. “All?”

“Hey, you wanna order Thai tonight? On me.” Alex hastily hops over the back of the couch, rushing off for the takeout menu drawer. 

“What do you mean _ all? _” 

October 14th: Day 444

“What are we cheersing too, exactly?” Kara asks tentatively as she clinks her wine glass against those of her friends over the ignored, overturned mess of a Monopoly board on the coffee table.

“It is officially the one-month anniversary of you holding a job,” Lucy announces with a smug smile. 

Kara frowns. “I started at Madewell two weeks ago.”

“I think she means the dog-walking one,” Kelly says, though distractedly, mostly focused on Alex’s hair, which she struggles to twist into a braid at Alex’s insistence, despite how Kelly pointed out several times that it’s too short for much of anything.

“Wait, what?” Lucy lowers her glass. “I meant driving for Lyft. Bitch, what are you borrowing my car every night for?”

“No, I work both.” 

Nia scrunches her nose in confusion, leaning forward from the couch cushions. “Wait, so how many jobs are you working now?”

“Just four.”

Lucy chokes on her own wine, swiping her red-stained mouth with the back of her hand. “The fuck is the fourth?” 

“Cinnabon. Sort of.”

“I thought you quit that one when you started at Madewell,” Alex remarks thoughtfully before Kelly flicks her in the temple for moving and disrupting such a masterful process.

“Okay, I was going to, but I get a really good discount, so I just dropped down to one shift a week.”

Lucy snorts, shaking her head. “Your taxes are going to be such a bitch next year.”

January 1st, 2021: Day 365

“Do you think she’s happy?”

Beside her, Alex’s mouth flattens out as she turns to her sister, the reflection of fireworks over the city skyline flaring in her eyes, a splay of colorful lights across her apprehensive face.

It doesn’t hurt, not if Kara squints and channels her breathing, flexes her core, leans on the inner stability she’s been exercising all year like a regular gym schedule. 

It doesn’t hurt, not if Kara is imagining that Lena bears the same glittering smile tonight as she did a year ago on this same rooftop, wherever she is now, rather than focusing on how it’s somewhere that’s not here.

It doesn’t hurt, not if Lena’s happier now, more so than Kara ever could have made her.

“Yeah,” Alex says finally, her tone gentle and soothing as she wraps an arm around Kara’s shoulders. “She’s probably bathing in champagne on a yacht, somewhere tropical. She’s good, don’t worry.”

It doesn’t hurt anymore, not like that. There’s consolation in loss when you know they’re better off without you anyway.

June 19th: Day 196

** _Lena Luthor Returns to National City for L-Corp & Spheerical Industries Partnership_ **

Of course it hurts, but—

It just doesn’t. 

August 14th: Day 140

“You can’t seriously be thinking about going.”

Fighting stiltedly with her tie, tugging it from its lopsided knot to just start over, Kara turns around from her vanity mirror with a huff. “I’m not thinking about it. I’m going.”

As she brushes past her sister, Alex groans in frustration. “Kara, just call out. You’ve already been there for over a month, you can call in a sick day.”

“No, actually, I can’t.” Kara paces into the living room, still fighting with her skinny tie. “I’m lucky Rhea even managed to score me this job, she put her neck out for me. If Veronica had found out she helped me, she’d lose the diner.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t afford a day off.”

“The barback already called out,” Kara grits, the cloth now too tight around her neck. “If I do too, J’onn won’t have anyone. I’d have to be on my deathbed to leave him hanging.”

“Jesus, just let me do it.” Alex yanks her to a halt, tugging her by the elbow towards her and undoing the tie. “Look, I’m not saying you can’t handle it.”

“That’s exactly what you’re saying.”

_ “No, _” Alex says forcefully, her eyes flitting up to Kara’s briefly. “I just… I don’t want you to be disappointed when it doesn’t go how you expect.”

Kara laughs, the side of her mouth slanting into a soft smile. “I know, but stop worrying. I’m not expecting anything.”

Alex’s eyebrows rise. “Not even for her to throw a drink in your face?”

“Okay, fine, my expectations are prepared for the worst. Better?”

“Much.”

❛❛ ❜❜

Seeing Lena Luthor for the first time in five hundred and ninety-two days feels less like an apocalyptic disaster and more like just the fragrant quiet of everything Kara could have hoped for finally being realized in one essential, precise moment.

This golden, vaulting room adorned with glittering decorations, an attendance equivalent to an entire small-town’s population filled across the floor, the expensive worship of this night, all for this one elegant woman staring at her now. 

Kara’s not so arrogant as to think this is her doing, no, not at all. 

She didn’t lie to Alex when she said she came in with little to no expectations, certainly not a misguided hope that something would change if their eyes were to meet.

But the blessed release of whatever guilt or self-deprecating animosity Kara still felt towards herself… somehow, now, it bleeds away like poison seeping out of her veins, and for the first time in nearly two years, Kara thinks maybe she can finally breathe.

Even the ungodly, beautiful woman at Lena’s side with her hand settled on the soft, warm skin of Lena’s forearm like it belongs there, like she has a right to touch her — it doesn’t elicit the same burn of regret as it did a year ago. It’s just the gasping weight of relief that comes with finally knowing Lena isn’t alone, she never was, she won’t be.

It’s one thing to see it on a screen, to read about in the occasional tabloid, to watch Lena’s success through the same lens as the rest of the world. 

It’s another entirely to have the assurance manifested in front of her, to have the glowing, impossible faith that Kara didn’t ruin them both finally come alive. No, she didn’t.

Because maybe time does hold a secret elixir of healing unlike anything else in this dimension.

❛❛ ❜❜

When Lena comes to visit her at the bar, after a speech so thoughtfully articulated and thrillingly humble, there’s two faint shadows under her eyes, more apparent now that the evening has progressed and her makeup has started to rub off.

This version, the one closest to how Lena looks when she’s alone, has always been the best one, far more beautiful than Forbes or CatCo could ever publish her as.

Lena pries. 

Kara doesn’t really get what she’s looking for, why she tilts her head and watches Kara with an analytical hesitance like she would with a data-set on a computer monitor, but Kara doesn’t mind. The narrowing of her eyes and the precise wording of her questions, it’s kind of just more cute than anything. A bit sweet, in a way. It’s like she’s searching for an angle, poking at this repeated performance of Kara behind the bar and Lena in the stool, like this all might be just another attempt at Kara putting on a harmless façade to get a scoop for Andrea Rojas.

It’s reassuring, Kara thinks, that Lena is so vigilant now. Not that she wasn’t before, not that she was ever naive, but it’s comforting to know she won’t ever let herself be used again, that she’s still careful with her heart, but that she didn’t lose it either.

Kara wants to tell her it’s okay, that they don’t have to pretend something for pleasantries, that she’s not going to try again to change what’s between them, she wouldn’t dare. Just like Alex was worried for Kara’s sake what tonight would do, what facing her past regrets so head-on would bring, Kara wouldn’t ever think about dragging up such an old wound for Lena, no.

“Listen, I just wanted to make sure you know that—”

“I have to go.”

The brief drop of Lena’s mouth, the momentary wrinkle beside her eyes, those faint circles underneath, for just a second they don’t remind Kara of beauty but instead of a long-forgotten, bone-deep exhaustion, one that Kara will later wonder if she only imagined.

Lena throws back her drink so fluidly, and Kara finds herself looking forward to the bottle of Riesling she has stashed in Lucy’s fridge that she’ll be able to finish after work.

Lena’s smile is rehearsed, a red-carpet signature. “Thank you for the drink, and it was nice to see you again.”

Still so polite, even to those who’ve done her wrong. It’s just so _ soothing _ to see Lena so strong still, after all this time, that Kara laughs.

“It’s okay,” she assures before dropping her tone with a joking lilt. “I know it wasn’t.”

The joke doesn’t land, of course, and Lena stares at her like Kara’s pushing it.

“Goodbye, Kara.”

Kara can’t explain the almost-giddy reprieve that comes with Lena looking at Kara like she doesn’t recognize her anymore before turning away, doesn’t really know why this feels like the chains clamped around her wrists are being smashed open on the bartop in front of her.

Watching Lena go, a closure blooming in her heart that Kara didn’t know she needed, Lena smiles.

“Congratulations, Lee,” Kara murmurs, both for the award, and to of course just not have let something so trivial as heartbreak do anything but lift her to success.

August 20th: Day 134

_ “Are you sure you’re gonna be okay by yourself?” _

Feet kicked up on the far armrest of the couch, one arm braced behind her head while the other flicks through the TV channels, her phone on speaker, covering the faded logo of her old NCU sweatshirt, Kara snorts.

“Yeah, I’ll call Kelly if I need someone to check under the bed for monsters.”

_ “Don’t be a dick.” _

“Really, I’m fine. You know I’ve spent nights without you, right?”

Alex sighs over the line, and Kara can hear the deflate of worry in it. _ “I know, but I mean, it’s been a while. Not since… you know.” _

“We really do talk about Lena like I went to war or something,” Kara remarks absently, pausing on an old re-run of _ X-Files. _ “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’ve got a hot date set up with a bottle of wine and Gillian Anderson, so go study for your test.”

_ “Pretty sure you already used up your takeout budget for this week.” _

“Mind your business.”

_ “I’ll be back Monday night, okay? I’m just staying with one of the girls from my study group for a couple nights, she lives closer to the library” _

“Any of them cute?”

_ “Yeah, too cute for you.” _

Alex is saved from a hot retort by a knock at the door, and Kara huffs as she rolls up to her feet. “You’re lucky my Postmates is here.”

_ “Kara, don’t tell me you fucking Postmates-ed your wine.” _

“Bye, good luck, love you!”

Hanging up before her sister can scold her more, Kara tucks her phone into the back of her loose sweatpants and pads over to answer the door, her fuzzy socks silent across the floors. When she does reach it, tugging it open with a thankful smile ready, it immediately freezes.

“You’re… not my Postmates.”

❛❛ ❜❜

The Lena that toes carefully into Kara’s apartment now is not the same woman from the gala.

This time, there’s no makeup even attempting to mask the dark smears under her eyes, the faint hollow of her cheeks. She’s… delicate, uncertain, skittish, like one wrong word and she’ll be running out the door faster than Kara could finish a sentence. Kara would almost dare call her nervous, specifically for the antsy way she inspects the room, her eyes trailing around like she’s cataloguing every detail.

The surprising part isn’t that Lena’s here. It makes sense, like a formal drop-in to remind Kara of some unspoken boundaries now that they’re in the same city again. No, what begins to slowly unravel in Kara’s stomach like an unruly shadow is this _ version _ of Lena that’s come to see her.

That relief Kara had felt last week, the weight lifted when she finally atoned herself of her sins, it stutters.

Because the Lena that sits across from her really doesn’t look like someone who’s moved on.

When the wine does finally arrive, Kara lets out the breath she’s been holding with a vice-like grip, and she’s quick to help herself to a hearty pour. Every little thing Kara thought she understood about this dynamic, the bubble of euphoric freedom this last week has brought her when Kara thought they both were finally passed the ache — 

It trembles, and Kara doesn’t know if it’ll withstand this gust of doubt.

❛❛ ❜❜

Lena drops the letter on the coffee table.

Honestly, Kara kind of forgot about those. Is that bad?

_ Open if you forgive me. _

Yeah, so she’s not totally positive what she wrote in that, but she remembers enough of the gist, knows she wrote it on a particularly lonely night before Alex had come back from rehab and Lena wasn’t sleeping over. Kara remembers crying, like a lot, pouring unnecessary excuses and justifications onto such a thin, cheap page of college-ruled paper. Kara knows it wasn’t very well thought out, that it never should have been added to the box in the first place.

No, she doesn’t really remember what she said, but it’s enough to make Kara’s heart twist with a painful throb of embarrassment for something so disoriented and unfair, something so juvenile. 

Honestly, looking at that folded sheet on the coffee table is worse than going through her hold Midvale High yearbooks.

❛❛ ❜❜

When Lena asks why, it’s all too clear that an answer is not what she’s looking for.

It’s all too clear to Kara that this isn’t how this is supposed to go.

Lena is supposed to be _ okay, _ not painted with this stiff-jawed, formal apathy like the only thing in her chest is a rock of steel, like it doesn’t take more effort than she’s letting on to look Kara in the eye, like she’s not bracing herself on a tightrope with a stubborn refusal to look down.

She was supposed to flourish, to… to live.

❛❛ ❜❜

Okay, it’s not funny. 

Kara knows that.

But it kind of is, just a little.

Like come _ on. _ Lena is the very person who inspired Kara to dig herself out of her pit of shame, to break the cycle of always fighting for something more, something out of reach. Sure, she had to reach a little bit of rock-bottom first, but it was in losing Lena that Kara finally found herself.

And, yeah, maybe Kara will never love anyone again like that, maybe the idea of being with someone else will always just be an off-handed joke with her sister or a light-hearted blind date here and there, maybe Kara will always have her heart too roped up in Lena’s happiness to ever even think of giving it to another person, and maybe Kara won’t admit this out loud to someone else, because _ god _ Alex and Kelly would just make her try Tinder again and she is _ not _ going through that again.

So like — Kara gets it. If she wanted to date again, she’d probably need to forget Lena, and that’s not something she’s interested in. That door is closed. And it’s not even like Kara’s ever been very focused or obsessed with love anyways. She never envisioned her future as a thing being tangled with an invisible spouse. No, Kara doesn’t really care. If it’s not gonna be Lena, it doesn’t really matter.

It’s _ funny _ because, for Kara, moving on means understanding that Lena will always be a part of her, and for Lena, it means carving that tainted corner of herself out and leaving it behind.

Which, Kara thought she already did, but that’s beside the point.

But then Lena recoils, eyes scathing and burning with disappointment as she asks, “Kara, that’s bullshit, what? Since when did you become the kind of person that needs someone else to be happy?” 

When Lena looks at Kara now like _ she’s _ the one who’s lost, like Kara is this broken and pathetic thing, it stirs an odd resentment that Kara is painfully familiar with, but never felt with Lena. Like how everyone else looked at her for months, like how they pranced around on egg-shells around her, like how Kara looked at _ herself _ in the mirror for so long — for those, Kara always found contempt for.

But Lena never pitied Kara, never before, that wasn’t their thing. For everything that Kara didn’t have, none of the money or the success, Lena never looked at her like this.

Lena builds a momentum with this look, her words all train together like they huddle around this central notion of picking apart a kicked-down Kara, an old self that hasn’t been around for over a year now. 

Kara shakes her head. “That’s not what I said. Are you gonna finish that?”

❛❛ ❜❜

If Dr. M’orzz could hear how Lena literally wants to put a time constraint on healing, she’d probably book her in for the next two years.

Kara considers giving Lena her number before she leaves, but she thinks better of it.

She also considers calling Alex, or Lucy, or anyone, really. But ultimately, Kara just turns _ X-Files _ back on, and that’s that on her self-reflection for the night .

August 21st: Day 133

She gets the weekend to think about it. 

Sort of. Lena asks to meet Sunday morning to discuss.

But it’s not like there’s really anything to think about, either.

Okay, Kara’s initial reaction to Lena’s suggestion was a little more skeptical than it should have been, borderline convinced this was a test of some sort, maybe she was just dreaming — like, literally _ anything _ else.

But when Sunday comes, and Kara’s sitting on the edge of her bed, fully dressed, foot tapping to the same tempo as her fingertips as she stares at the clock, she has to admit it.

Okay, time is what _ Kara _ needed, yes. But Lena is a different person, and she probably knows herself far better than anyone, so if she says that this is what she needs in order to be at peace with this entire thing, then, well. 

Who is Kara to take authority over what Lena needs, to call it anything less just because it doesn’t look like how she found her way?

Kara’s fingers don’t stop tapping until she rushes through the restaurant doors and catches the back of Lena’s head at a white-linen table, a half-drunk mimosa pitcher on the table.

“Hey, sorry, trains were a bitch, there was a delay on the B-line, sorry if you were waiting long. You get started without me?”

August 26th: Day 128

“Alex, we’ve got a _ lot _ of research to do,” Kara announces, bursting through the front door as she scrolls through a long list of films on her phone.

At the table, her sister has a splay of various textbooks and printed out slides, eyes bloodshot and her short hair stuck up comically on one side where her hand had been pressed against it. “God, tell me about it.”

But Kara stops with a frown, looking up from her phone. “What? No, forget biology, I’m talking about movies.”

“No, more like _ fuck _ the biology, because I’ll never have time for another movie again.”

“Look.” Kara takes the generous liberty of shutting Alex’s books for her, stacking everything into a neat pile. “You know those activities I told you Lena came up with?”

Alex slumps forward into her arms over the table, grunting in a way that sounds faintly like affirmation.

“Okay, so, it got me thinking, right? Where is the best place to learn about forgiveness from?”

“A therapist,” Alex mumbles through her elbow.

“Yeah, I thought about that, but I don't think most people appreciate being told they need one of those. So.” Kara claps her hands, grinning. “What’s the second best, then?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

“Rom-coms, Alex.” Kara laughs gleefully, rounding to the other side of the table to drag her sister to her feet and pull her towards the living room, setting her down on the couch like positioning a rag doll. “I’m serious, like eighty percent of them are about someone screwing up royally and then having to figure out how to help the other person forgive them. These are _ literally _ going to solve all of our problems.”

“I think you’re missing a key point,” Alex says flatly as Kara fishes through the cushions for the Roku remote.

“What?”

“They usually get the girl in the end.”

Kara pauses in her search, something like a hiccup in her chest, and when she looks back to Alex again, her smile is much more organized in its objective. “Which means the girl also forgives them, so, it’s close enough.”

“Right, ‘cause that’s the only part you’re interested in.”

“Yep.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay,” Kara sighs, collapsing onto the couch beside her sister with the remote in hand. “Lucy said we should watch _ How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days _ first, said that’s a classic, and I’ll really relate to it.”

“You told Lucy about this dumb ass plan?”

“Stop that,” Kara chastises, smacking her sister’s knee. “It’s not dumb, it’s what she needs.”

“Dude, you said it yourself. You can’t put a time constraint on moving on, she has no idea what she’s doing. This whole thing is insane.”

“So — I’ll help her figure it out, then.” Kara shrugs flippantly, entering the title into the Netflix search bar. “But to answer your question, no, I didn’t tell Lucy, but she’s definitely the rom-com expert of us all, so. I just asked for some general pointers.”

When Alex doesn’t immediately answer, just before playing the movie, Kara turns to her. She’s both unsurprised and disappointed with the apprehension she finds caking Alex’s face like the unsavory mud it is.

“What?” she huffs, though it’s practically rhetorical, because she can already hear where this is going. “Just say it.”

“I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”

“Good thing I won’t,” Kara clips, hopping from the couch to go make popcorn before they start. “I’m not expecting this to go back to something, or hoping for it go any particular way other than Lena moving on with her life. It’s like — look, it’s like Groundhog’s day.”

“You’ve really got to cool it with the movies.”

“He was never going to be able to move on with his life until he made amends with all the dumb shit he did, he owed it to the people of the town to give them the right coverage, and he owed it to Rita.”

“Kara, seriously, what?”

Exhaling forcefully, Kara shuts the microwave with a harder push than necessary, jabs the popcorn button. “I owe this to her, Alex. She’s still hurting, and I’m not, and this is all my fault anyway, so. If _ I _ want to move on with my life, I have to help _ her. _”

Either Alex hears the faint blade of impatience creeping into Kara’s tone, or she’s just smart enough to know when to rein back in, because she lets up. “Okay, yeah, I know, I’m sorry. I do get it. And it’s sweet, what you’re doing for her.”

“Thank you.” 

“She better fucking appreciate it, too.”

When the banana that Kara launches at the back of Alex’s head misses, she absolutely claims it was on purpose.

September 6th: Day 117

“Just say you want to do something else.”

“Shouldn’t you be leaving for work right about now?” Kara asks, her eyes still closed as she leans back in the metal cafe chair, head hanging over its backside, basking in the melting euphoria of the direct sunlight.

“You know I always have time to grace you with my wisdom.”

“You mean to criticize everything I do.”

“Same thing. So, you’ll tell her?”

Kara sits up and lifts a hand to shield her eyes from the blinding rays as she glares at her sister. They’re only a few blocks away from Spheerical Industries, enjoying the last lick of sunshine before autumn comes and catching their morning coffees together before Alex’s shift and Kara’s activity of the day with Lena.

“It’s fine, okay?” Kara insists. “This was one of the few things Lena was actually excited to do. I’m not gonna back out, I promised her I never would.”

“You hate aquariums.”

“I don’t _ hate _ them.”

“You don’t like them either.” Alex shoots her a droll, pointed look over the rim of her drink, and Kara sighs restlessly.

“They just— it’s not like that, it was just—”

“It was you and your parents’ thing,” Alex finishes with a finite point to her tone. “Exactly. You refused to go when we were kids, so I know how much they remind you of them. Just tell her. Didn’t you say honesty is a big rule with you guys now?”

Kara slumps back into her seat with a dismissive shake of her head. “She didn’t ask, so it’s not like I’m lying about anything.”

“Yeah, she didn’t ask if you were writing an article about her either.”

“You are really asking for me to hit you.”

“Oh, I would _ love _ to see you try.”

❛❛ ❜❜

The suppressive darkness of this cold, tight space makes Kara wonder.

She’s always wondering, her thoughts wander here and there endlessly, never sticking to much of anything concrete, yet somehow they still gleam with clarity that Kara could never articulate.

“They can’t help it, you know. Being alone.” Lena points along the fish’s backside, and Kara follows the motion. “Their dorsal fin is unfathomably poisonous, they’ll attack even others of their own kind if they come too close.”

“Why?”

“Mm, no one knows exactly. It’s suspected that they evolved this way because all they wanted was to be left to themselves, not to be bothered.”

Kara bites her lip, watching how Lena looks to this fish with such starstruck awe, such beautiful respect and admiration. 

Her finger taps at her side. “Or maybe all that venom just forced them to get used to being alone.”

They stand side by side another minute longer, the divide between them cold and still, Lena with a sinking, pensive frown, and Kara with just an unsettling uncertainty of whether or not her parents would be proud of the person she’s become, this poisonous body she’s adapted to.

But Kara doesn’t like to ask questions that can’t be answered. Not anymore. 

“Can we go now?”

September 24th: Day 99

“You’re happier when she’s around.”

Kara glances over her shoulder and catches Lena’s eye, who sits back at the table still with the rest of her friends, before turning back forward to the bar, waiting for Mike to notice them.

“Am I?”

Alex makes a vague wave over Kara’s entire form. “You’re just a lot more relaxed than usual.”

Kara smirks faintly, glancing down to the stillness of her hand against the bartop. “You sound surprised.”

“I mean, setting aside the fact that it’s gross—”

“Oh, come on,” Kara laughs, standing up straighter as she turns to her sister. “Everyone’s excited that Lena’s here, I’m so not the only one.”

“Yeah, none of them were in love with her, either.”

Were.

Kara doesn’t correct her.

“Debatable.” Kara turns again, this time intentionally angling her head to catch Mike’s eye. “Winn always gets pretty intense where Lena’s concerned.”

“I guess I just expected you to be as antsy as she is, is all.”

They both look over their shoulders again, and Kara is the first to sheepishly duck her head when she finds Lena is still watching them.

Alex is less bothered, holds the stare like a challenge, before she looks at Kara again. “She’s still leaving, isn’t she?”

“Don’t know why you’d think that’s changed.”

“You clearly don’t want her to.”

This time, Kara’s laugh is more acidic, the flick of her tongue against her teeth sharp and biting. “Well, obviously I don’t, but I’m not expecting her to stay. You really want to have this conversation again? What is this, round four?”

But Alex doesn’t rise for the bait of another petty Danvers argument, and she just raises her eyebrows bemusedly. “No, I don’t. Because believe it or not, keeping up with every detail of your love life takes up a lot of mental space that I could really be using for school.”

Kara only gives a small _ hmph. _

“I know you’re smart, Kara. I know you know what you’re doing.”

A dry laugh. “But?”

“I think, sometimes, it just… it hurts less if you quit while you’re ahead.”

“Ahead?” Kara laughs again. “How are we ahead? Maybe I’m happy with Lena here, but have you seen her? She’s miserable when I’m around. She’s nowhere near having moved on.”

“I mean you, Kara. I mean you have the closure and the strength to look her in the eye and say goodbye now, to be okay with the fact that this won’t last, but I’m saying what about later? Are you still going to feel that way in two months, when you get used to having her in your life again?”

“This isn’t about me, Alex.” Finally Mike arrives, and Kara loosens the tense line of her jaw to order for them, and she continues once he leaves them again. “Look, that’s my point. I’m fine, she’s not. She asked for my help, I’m gonna give it to her. End of story.”

It really is almost left at that, because Mike drops the two sodas and Kara’s pint of beer in front of her, and Kara scoops them up in a triangle between her hands, turning back to the table, when Alex’s hand falls to her elbow.

“Okay, I _ get _ it, I know you think I don’t, but just — can you promise me one thing?”

Sighing, Kara gives a curt nod. 

“If you’re a wreck when she leaves again, can you pretend you’re not? I have a bet running with Kelly.”

Kara stares at her, waiting for the punchline, but when it doesn’t come, she just barks an incredulous laugh, lost somewhere between offense and a boneless appreciation for how Alex always manages to keep her grounded in good faith. “I’m sorry, you guys are already making bets? You couldn’t have waited another month?”

“Yeah, and I have a lot of money riding on this, so get those tear ducts ready.”

“You’re such a jerk,” Kara laughs again, heading for the table again.

But Alex only loops her arm smugly through Kara’s, her smile weightless and forever. “Yeah, and you love me for it.”

❛❛ ❜❜

It’s not until Lena stands on a box and murmurs a song with the despondent sort of yearning of someone who perilously struggles to mean the words would sings, words that glow with accepting the change of these tides and moving on from the loneliness that comes in the aftermath of losing someone they built their life around, of delivering this like she means it. 

It’s not until now that Kara realizes how dark Lena’s world has become.

The woman that rambles in uncoordinated circles in the bathroom isn’t broken, the one who can’t face her own heartache and instead needs to project her coldest insecurities onto Kara or she’d just shatter the placating defense she’s spent the last two years building — she’s not a pale shell of the woman she used to be.

She’s just… lost, and Kara can’t help but wonder if she’s looking for her in all the wrong places.

November 15th: Day 47

“You don’t have to keep doing this,” Lena says quietly one afternoon, not looking away from her computer.

They’re up in her office, suspended in the oblivion of the sky, having lunch like any other day. They don’t do much else anymore. 

It could be just a dream if Kara weren’t careful.

The fork that’s fishing through a box of lo mein for a bite of baby corn pauses, Kara stops chewing. “Do what?” she mumbles through her half-full mouth.

Lena couldn’t seem to care less about Kara’s awful manners, but she doesn’t seem to care about anything that Kara does these days.

She gives a generic wave. “Coming in like this, pretending you’re not bored.”

“I’m not bored. You’re fun to look at, you frown a lot when you go through your emails.”

Lena doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even acknowledge Kara’s said anything. “You shouldn’t waste your break on my account, not when I hardly give you the same courtesy. Wouldn’t you rather go have lunch with one of your friends? Someone from work?”

“We’re friends,” Kara points out.

Lena’s lack of a response is more indicative of her opinion than anything she could vocally say, but she does have the decency to look Kara in the eye when she remains quiet, her own eyes sagging and tired.

If Kara could do anything, if she could carry a plane on her back or stop a bullet with her hands, all she would use that strength for is to lift Lena just a little bit higher, so maybe she’d see the same light on the horizon that Kara can see.

“Well,” Kara hums, leaning back into the white leather chair, kicking off her shoes and propping her undoubtedly smelly, socked feet up on the corner of Lena’s desk. She gives a loose shrug, gives Lena an expressly challenging look. “Maybe I’m not one of yours, but you’re one of mine, so. You’re just gonna have to suck it up and get used to it.”

Again, Lena turns back to her computer without another word, and the rest of their lunch continues in typical, quiet fashion.

But a hint of a smile peeks through Lena’s mouth as she sorts through the rest of her emails, and Kara considers that enough of a win.

November 17th: Day 45

It obviously stings a bit.

If this is how Lena moves on, all this indifference, how little she cares whether Kara’s around or not, then it’s for the best. It means it’s working. 

Kara doesn’t get the selfish benefit of being hated, of Lena caring enough for that much effort, and certainly not of being loved. She knows apathy is key to Lena’s healing. No, that’s not what Kara sought in her repentance, she never wanted to let go of this piece of her heart that Lena will always own real estate in. But she also knows that anything like that would consume Lena, not like the lifeline it is for Kara, but just an anchor under the foaming white current.

It hurts, obviously, like watching someone forget you.

This is exactly what keeps her going.

And, you know, the alleviated smile Lena gives Kara two days later, when she comes back for yet another L-Corp lunch break, however small it might be — 

Well, that helps too.

December 3rd: Day 28

Alex is frowning before she’s even come through the door, her nose sniffing suspiciously at the air.

She approaches the kitchen island slowly, sets her purse on one of the stools carefully. “Uh, Kara?”

“Hm?”

“What are you doing?”

Kara spins around from the cupboard, wiping away an errant smear of enchilada sauce from her cheek before she leans over the open cookbook on the counter. “Do we have a food processor? You think I can use the coffee grinder?”

“I don’t know? I didn’t even know you knew how to use the oven.”

“Hey.” Kara holds up a wooden spoon in warning. “The internet is full of helpful, nonjudgmental instructions, thank you very much.”

Alex narrows in on the heart of this occasion embarrassingly fast.

“Is this for Lena?”

Kara huffs, struggling to push her hair out of her face with only her wrists. “Is it so impossible to imagine I’d learn a new skill just to do something nice for my sister?”

“Yeah, it is. What time is she coming?”

Kara manages to hold Alex’s testing stare for a good few seconds, solidly stands her ground, but her own curiosity gets the better of her, and she finally cleans her hands on a dish rag and scoops her phone off the counter behind her.

“Okay, she’s coming at…” Kara unlocks her phone, rocking on the balls of her feet as she pulls up her text conversation with Lena, when she stops just as abruptly, and her shoulders sag.

_ Not gonna make it tonight, busy. Sorry. _

Still across the island, Alex tilts her head to catch her eye. “Kara?”

Clearing her throat, Kara tucks her phone away into her back pocket with a tight-lipped smile. “She’s held up with some other stuff, so looks like you got your wish. You better like enchiladas.”

Kara would rather throw the entire oven and casserole dish out the window than be on the receiving end of Alex’s pity, but miraculously, her sister only smiles. It’s loose, of course it’s empathetic, but for the first time in so long, Alex doesn’t look sorry for Kara, just adoring, and it makes the pang of disappointment just that much quieter.

“Well, if I know you at all,” Alex starts, coming around to Kara’s side and slinging an arm around her neck as she inspects Kara’s work so far. “It’s that you probably made way too much fucking food, so. I’ll call everyone else? You know Lucy can eat like a truck.”

Kara gives Alex a hug that’s extra tight that night, because if Kara is her own hero, then Alex is her point of origin.

December 17th: Day 14

Kara hasn’t really thought about kissing Lena in a while. Not like, explicitly.

It’s like a dream she doesn’t think about despite how she still remembers it, not until something very specific reminds her of it — it’s more a feeling than anything, not necessarily the action of Lena’s eyes dropping to Kara’s mouth, not the action itself, but it’s in the ensuing swing of Kara’s stomach, not like dread or apprehension, but like a home she can’t believe she almost forgot existed.

Somehow, it’s exactly this that threatens to break up the rose-colored lens of this weekend.

Kara wonders, if Lena could see how she looks at Kara when so much alcohol pumps through her bloodstream, if someone were to show her a picture of it sober, if she would think differently. Kara wonders if Lena means it, if she would come back to change anything about this moment.

It’s exactly this wonder that makes Kara figure imagination isn’t all that different from hope.

December 18th: Day 13

She hasn’t read it.

Kara understands why. Oh, how she understands.

The distant memory of mind-numbing hatred, the sickening disgust for such a catalyst, the mutilation of deceit and and regret, Kara is all too familiar.

It’s fitting, almost, because Kara had never read it either. Not at first, anyway.

She never opened the embarrassingly long pages of CatCo’s printed edition, never scrolled through the online database for it, never looked once at it since her submission, since her half-assed edits before sending it to Andrea for review when she had thought it would be returned before its publication.

But when she’d gotten home from that first brunch in the beginning, when Lena had scolded her to take this seriously and not make a fool out of Lena again or waste her time, Kara sucked up her anxious reservations for opening up an old gate of torment like the bitter remnants of an unsavory medicine. When she got home that day, Kara finally read it. Even if it would break what she had rebuilt, even if it would kick Kara down to her knees and off the stepstool of her carefully acquired strength, Kara would read it. 

It didn’t break her, but of course it hurt. Of course its honest, naive adoration was exactly what was so devastating.

What’s worse than the fleeting desire that comes from eye contact that lasts too long, than a momentary lapse of caution that makes room for a brief fantasy where all of Kara’s dreams do come true, what is abominably worse than a hope that holds no potential for fruition is one that _ does _.

What’s worse is this sticky, wretched spark in her chest where Kara truly believes she might still have a chance.

Because Lena is meticulous, she considers this achievement of forgiveness as a venture of strategy. She put together a list of steps like a business plan, of course she did, and who is Kara to call that dysfunctional? To say that it wouldn’t work, what, just because it’s not how Kara managed to forgive herself? Lena is a different person than Kara, if she needs this sort of compartmentalizing structure to process, then that’s what she needs.

But Lena is a businesswoman, and she’s treated this like a work assignment.

How is reading the article anything but the preliminary homework in preparing for this? It’s the physical manifestation of Kara’s lies, of the betrayal, to dismiss it is to not face the problem in the first place.

So if Lena didn’t read it, couldn’t it mean this was never about moving on so as to move away? 

Couldn’t it mean it was about their moving forward, to somewhere new?

How Lena looks at Kara know, her eyes wide and laden with fear like she knows what Kara’s about to say, like maybe she never wanted this to end either, of course it makes Kara hope. Of course that hope feels justified, of course she feels like this could be more.

But hope for the impossible has always been Kara’s kryptonite, and if she’s learned one thing over the last two years, it’s how to come to terms with appreciating the things she has, and not dwelling on those that she can’t.

And Lena, she does not have.

She just never did.

Kara can’t pretend she does, and she never could’ve imagined that turning her back would be what she needs to survive, that this is how she saves herself. She never thought that the best thing she could do for herself would be to leave before Lena could, she never thought this was her moment of heroism.

“I’m sorry,” Kara breathes, her entire body sore from pulling away from the very person her muscles and tendons all ache to reach for. “I just… I can’t put myself through that again.”

This is nearly the end.

December 19th: Day 12

Duffel slung over her shoulder, Kara drops her fist from the hardwood door, and waits.

Moments later, Gayle emerges, and the slant of her eyes and the pinch of her frown feels almost like she’d been expecting this.

But Kara doesn’t see any pity in her eyes, and this is a breath of fresh air that few other people have given her.

“I fucked up, didn’t I?”

Even with the clench of her firm stance, of Kara’s refusal to give in to where her heart longs to take her, to run back down the halls and drop to the floor and beg Lena to never go, despite this headache-inducing inner battle, Kara still finds it in her for a small laugh, and she shakes her head.

“No, you didn’t do anything wrong. Can I um… can I stay here tonight?”

Gayle crosses her arms, leaning into the doorframe. “She fucked up, didn’t she?” 

“No one fucked up, we just… we both were pretending for too long.”

“Pretending what?”

Kara smiles, a tired, forgiving thing. “That we ever knew how to give each other what we needed, I guess.”

❛❛ ❜❜

When Kara walks in the front door, twelve hours sooner than she told Alex she would be back, her sister softens.

“You were right,” is all Kara can say.

“I didn’t want to be.” Alex makes no move forward, doesn’t meet her halfway like she knows Kara’s in a place she can’t be found. “So she left, then? Already?”

This is the easier way out, right? It’s supposed to hurt less this way? Doing it before she can? 

Being the one with agency, being the one to decide when it all ends?

“No.” Kara’s voice trembles, her eyes sting like the brace for impact. “I did.”

December 20th: Day 11

The impact doesn’t come. 

There’s a pitfall to ultimate despair, to losing someone she thought she couldn’t live without.

The thing is — 

Kara did. She already did.

It hurt like a bear-trap latched around her throat, like hot coals searing the walls of her stomach, like acid chewing the flesh from her knuckles and wrists, like wreckage. The sun had never been darker, the moon never quite so pale, Kara tasted the salt in sugar, and her greatest enemy was herself in a battle to the death. 

And yet? 

She came out, conquered her own night terrors, fell down to nothing and picked herself back up, piece by piece. She is trembling, but Kara commands her own forecast.

There’s a pitfall to ultimate despair, to losing someone.

Kara has just learned that Lena, she can live without.

It doesn’t diminish how she feels, doesn’t change how she loves her. Kara just figured out a way to not let it break her, to let herself feel the loneliness of the void left behind without letting it consume her. 

She’ll miss her, of course. She always will. 

But Kara still wakes the next morning, the sky hasn’t caved into the universe, and her bed can still be made without her here.

December 25th: Day 6

Kelly tilts her head, holding the plush toy in front of her and examining it like it has an ulterior, deceptive meaning to it embedded inside it.

“Is this… um, I’m sorry, what is it?” she asks tentatively, squinting at the tag. “A fish? From the National City Aquarium?”

“A spotfin lionfish. I uh, I thought it was cute.”

“Cute.”

Kara scratches her head, and Alex is struggling to contain her snorting giggles. “Yeah, I mean, fish are cool…?”

Kelly levels her with a sympathetic look. “This wasn’t originally meant for me, was it?”

Hands cold like something is missing, but chest warm with acceptance, dropping her eye, Kara shakes her head.

December 31st: Day 0

“It’s fine,” Kara sighs, leaning back against the kitchen island, her hands fisted around its wooden edge.

The lip of the freshly-opened wine bottle pops from Lucy’s mouth wetly, and she gives an indignant scoff. “Excuse me, you are in no position to be telling me this is fine.”

Kara raises her eyebrows. “This is my apartment.”

“Which is exactly why it is your job to fix this.”

Alex pads over from the living room, one hand rifling through a half-empty bag of Cheetos, a smear of the orange powder under her bottom lip. She nods at Lucy, though she looks to Kara. “She blaming you for the rain?”

“I’m not _ blaming _ her, I’m saying she has a duty to do something about it.”

“Yeah.” Kara sighs, tipping her head back exasperatedly. “She is.”

“Okay, so we’re gonna spend New Year’s inside this year.” Alex rolls her eyes, flicking a splatter of crumbs at Lucy. “Get over it.”

“We haven’t spent New Year’s inside in over five years. This is unacceptable, and I want a refund.”

“For what?” Alex laughs. “Kelly and I paid for everything, including that wine you’re sucking down your throat.”

Lucy clutches said wine close to her chest, shielding it. 

“What do you want me to do?” Kara asks with a tired edge bordering on annoyance. “Go stand on the roof, scream at the sky to make it stop?”

“Yes, exactly. I’ll insta-live it.”

Pushing off from the counter with a huff, Kara snatches the bottle from Lucy too quickly for the brunette to stop her, and turns to Alex with a reproachful look. “You deal with her. I’m gonna play Drenga with Winn.”

“The fuck is Drenga?”

“Drunk Jenga,” Alex explains to Lucy absently, watching Kara sludge off to the living room with pursed-lip unease, a look that Kara catches when she drops to the couch beside her friend and glances back up at her sister.

“Since when did we get that, and why haven’t I been invited?”

Kara looks away before she takes a swig of the bottle.

❛❛ ❜❜

“You’re more testy than usual.”

Kara picks at the peeling label of the bottle, leaned back against the wall and watching the latest game of beer pong between Nia, Brainy, and Lucy and James with delayed, unfocused interest. 

“It’s just the weather,” Kara answers dismissively, her gaze dragging back and forth with the bounce of the ball. “Getting to me. It’s nothing.”

“You love the rain.”

“Not today.”

Alex sighs, sitting on the armrest of the cushioned chair beside them with a Spindrift can dangling loosely from her hands between her knees. 

“You’re wondering what she’s doing, aren’t you?”

Kara’s jaw clenches only briefly, a momentary flare of fire in her eyes, before they both fade and loosen, not like she’s squashing it down, but like an automatic, soothing response, an instinctual, healing defense.

“Am I that obvious?”

Her sister shrugs. “Little bit. But I know this time of year always makes you think of her.”

Kara swallows, inhaling deeply through her nose. “I just can’t help but feel like I’m always going to wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“What if?” Kara straightens her back, running a free hand back through her hair. “Like, what if she was going to change her mind? What if she was gonna decide not to leave? What if I’d… stayed?”

She feels the sear of Alex’s level stare as prominent as sunlight.

“What if it was going to work out, and I’m just the one that ended it anyway?”

Alex scratches the edge of her jaw, grimacing in her search for the right thing to say. “You still deserve better than what it was. You deserve someone who knows when enough is enough. You messed up, fine, she has a right to hurt and maybe she’s scared, I get that. But how long was she going to punish you for that? It’s been two years, Kara.”

Kara’s fingers tap against the bottle, slight, more like a vibration that mimics the rising race of her heart. “I know it was the right choice. I know it’s what I had to do. It wasn’t working for her, and it was hurting us both more than it was helping her. Because that just… it takes up so much space, doesn’t it? Holding onto a grudge like that, pretending for the sake of the moment that everything’s fine?”

“Yeah.”

“I had to do it. I was hurting her by letting her re-live her pain over and over again, and she was hurting me by… by…”

“I know.”

Kara’s eyes burn, her mouth pinches between her teeth. “We tried to do it together, we tried to make it work, and we couldn’t. But I have no doubt that walking away was the best thing for both of us.”

“You’re right.”

“Then why do I still wonder?” Kara turns to her sister now, face twisted both with pain and resilience. “Why do I wonder what might’ve been different when I know I didn’t have any other choice?”

Alex’s shoulders fall, eyes lost with understanding. “Because you’re human?”

If that’s all the answer there is to a question she already knew to be unanswerable, it’s still not satisfying.

The taut line of tension running down her neck and throughout her spine loosens, somewhat. Her posture slouches, Kara lets go of this vacuous fight, a battle where the only collateral damage is herself.

“And, I mean.” The corner of Alex’s mouth lilts up into a playful smile. “You know what they say.”

“What?”

“If you love something, let it go. If it comes back—”

“Don’t you dare start with that,” Kara interrupts with a laugh, surprising herself with the stretch of such a genuine smile through the ache in her chest.

But that’s all moving on is, right? Being able to still live and laugh and through the pain?

“I’m just saying.” Alex raises her hands defensively. “It’s not a bad sentiment. Either way, you’ll be okay, and so will she. Because whatever happens… that’s how it was meant to go.”

Now bearing a smirk herself, Kara gives her sister a droll look. “You, believing in fate? God, you are getting old.”

“Watch it,” Alex snaps, smacking Kara’s elbow. “I can still—”

There’s a knock at the door, and Lucy scrambles to answer it, knocking over her and James’ last two standing solo cups in her haste.

“Mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes,” the young Lane chants excitedly as she skids around Winn and and Kelly in the foyer, ignoring James’ objections after her.

Alex cuts off mid-sentence, watching their goofy friend over shoulder, and Kara laughs with her. “Please don’t tell me you did not order KFC on New Year’s, we still have two entire pizzas left.”

“You know what, Danvers?” Lucy cuts her a glare, her hand on the door handle. “You guys didn’t even get any decent champagne, and I’m done explaining myself to you, so if you’ll _ excuse _ me, I have a feast to enjoy.”

“Is KFC really a feast?” Kara whispers, and both Alex and Nia snort as Lucy opens the door excitedly.

“Hey, thanks for coming out in the—” Lucy cuts off with a comical squeak, freezing in the door, and Kara exchanges amused looks with the rest of her friends.

“You think she’s realizing she ordered too much?” James asks, bouncing his ping pong ball impatiently against the table.

“Maybe.” Kara purses her lips, tilts her head. “But to be fair, there really is no such thing as too much food.”

Alex turns on Kara with a warning drag of her mouth, a dangerous grin. “Yes there fucking is. Don’t think I’ll let you forget National Clam Chowder day.”

“Oh c’mon, that hardly counts, you _ know _ I already wasn’t feeling—”

The door slams abruptly shut, and everyone looks up again to find Lucy shuffling hastily back into the living room with wide eyes and teeth bared into a grimace.

“What, where’s this feast at?” Alex asks with a laugh.

“I would like to put in a formal statement that I had nothing to do with this.”

“With what?”

Kara takes another sip of her wine, smiling around its mouth. “Did you really leave them standing in the hallway?”

“It’s just, this feels like the kind of thing you guys would usually pin on me, and I want to make it perfectly clear I am not behind this, nor did I know it was going to happen, and it has nothing to do with your bet.”

Kelly frowns, the first to doubt this moment. “Behind what?” 

When Lucy’s eyes flicker to Kara’s first, like weightless orbs suspended in space and time, like there’s no one else in the room, like an unbending loyalty, like the rest of this exposition is meaningless in the face of right now, there’s no other thought.

Kara pushes off from the wall and immediately side-steps through the small circle of her friends.

“No, wait, Kara, maybe don’t—”

The time and space between her spot and the door should feel infinite, it should drag like treading through thick molasses, but Kara hasn’t so much as breathed, hasn’t registered a single word more of Lucy’s ramblings behind her and Alex’s interrogating questions, growing more urgent the closer Kara gets to the door.

No, it’s not an eternity to the door, it’s hardly a scratch in time.

She can already hear the faint muffle of conversation from the hallway before she’s even tugged open the door, two overlapping voices that come into precise clarity as Kara tugs it ajar.

“I can’t believe—”

“You wouldn’t have come—” 

“—you _ blindfolded _ me just for _ — _”

“—if you’d known where we—” 

The two women snap their mouths shut in unison as Kara comes into view, both wearing identical, alarmed looks of surprise.

Kara glances between them, between Sam, who has a knotted red bandana that musses her hair pushed up over her forehead, trails of rainwater coating down the sides of her face, and Lena, who is in turn completely drenched, from the sopping deadweights of her long hair, through the cotton of her expensive peacoat, and down into the faint squelches of her meager leather boots that have no business being worn outside this time of year

Kara glances between them, unsure if there’s a thud in her chest winding into a crescendo or just into an absence of anything at all.

Lena’s bottom lip twitches, and she drags it between her teeth before she holds up a thick, sleek black bottle, its top wrapped in a gold foil sealed by a red wax press, a bottle Kara only recognizes because Roulette used to sell it for nearly six hundred a glass.

“I brought champagne?” Lena offers tentatively, her cringe of a smile crooked and uncertain.

Kara now looks between the bottle and Lena’s face, distantly wondering if it’s just some manifestation of shock, or this really does seem like the most important thing to address first, because she settles finally on the bottle.

“Don’t let Lucy see that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 25 chapters, yes. ill take five shots and post a video later
> 
> was this chapter fluffy? angsty? both? i don't even know


	22. i have lost my way now, haven’t forgotten my way home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two things
> 
> 1\. listen to [this cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjmSn_ViYIQ&list=RDNjmSn_ViYIQ&) or [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwcLMF5e5-4) about a quarter of the way in, when you get to the scene that starts with "what are you doing here?" — i just think it makes things interesting :)
> 
> 2\. thank you lyd as always for being the best beta and always pointing out to me when i start making up words like i think im shakespeare or something
> 
> thank you for your patience, and as we all know, i am not a journalist/businessperson/scientist/celebrity

It should go without saying that Lena doesn’t sleep much that night.

The only consolation is that the scrubbed-pink corners of her eyes, which are too prominent for makeup to cover, along with the violet smears of exhaustion underneath them, mesh together quite nicely to pair with the royal purple trim of her dress.

It should be far too cold this high up the mountain for a wedding, but with the numerous lines of heat-lamps, a practical wall of environmental obscenities surrounding this temporary communal space, it’s become bearable enough for only a light shawl twisted around her shoulders. Lena stands a small ways away from the bar and the spread plot of seating, away from the chatter of Wall Street’s mingling elite she’d prefer to avoid being recognized by, staring blankly out into the blinding distance of glaring, snow-capped mountain ranges.

But the icy clench of her dry, sore throat and the chill of her chest, beyond a scale so limited as temperature — that, on the other hand, still remains.

Gayle appears at her side, a glass of water and a flute of champagne in hand.

“You never cease to amaze me, Luthor.”

Lena’s too tired somewhere far deeper than her bones for this. “How’s that?”

“Didn’t think you could look worse than you did yesterday morning, and yet, look at you now. Amazing. How do you do it?”

Lena turns to Gayle with only a flat, empty stare to show she’s in no mood for games this morning, but before she can muster up the energy to make that explicitly clear in words, the blonde is holding up the water in offering. Lena shakes her head, but Gayle presses, and Lena relents with a despondent roll of her eyes.

And it’s—

Lena sputters. “Is this just straight vodka?”

“No, it’s on ice.”

“Jesus,” Lena mutters, clearing her throat. “I know it’s a wedding, but this is still too early, even for you.”

“Good thing it’s not for me.”

When Lena finally looks up to Gayle’s eyes to find a patronizing distrust, instead of the same light-hearted laze that the heiress is usually known for in the morning, Lena narrows her eyes.

“Well, I don’t want it.”

“Yeah, babe, I think you do.”

Lena keeps her glare level, but Gayle remains unfazed, the glass held out with still hands and an unwavering stare.

“You know, I really thought the bed was for sure gonna fix you two.”

Lena blinks at the change of subject. “The bed?”

Gayle twists her mouth to one side, expression laden with dubious guilt. “I might’ve paid the front desk to not let you switch rooms. I’m still not totally convinced you guys didn’t fuck the first night, by the way.”

It is far too soon for jokes like this, the urge to laugh only yanks out a sharp, acrid stab of regret, and Lena clenches her jaw.

“So. Where _ is _ Kara?” Gayle finally asks in a suspiciously faux-interested tone, tilting her head mockingly. “Thought for sure she’d appreciate a wedding more than anyone.”

Just hearing her name sends a sharp breeze down Lena’s spine, raises a scatter of goosebumps along her arms. She drops Gayle’s gaze and turns back to the snowy scape of the ceremony’s grounds, the elegant wooden chairs laced with jasmines and holly, the beautiful arch made from birch branches and floral garnishes mounted at the cusp of the hill before it drops into the slope. 

As silly as a ski wedding seems, as frivolous it is to want to marry someone on a pair of carbon-fiber sticks before skiing off into a figurative sunset, the fact of the matter still is that the married couple-to-be will have each other tonight, and Lena will be sleeping alone.

Lena takes a long swallow of the sinfully cold liquor and clears her throat. “You seem like you already know she’s not coming, so. I don’t see why you feel the need to rub my face in it.”

But Gayle laughs, the stretch of her grin infernal. “Oh, I’m absolutely gonna rub your face in it, least until you get your head out of your ass.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s your own fault she’s gone. Honestly, I’m surprised you’re still here at all.”

“How do you even know she left?” Lena bites, the rising heat of irritation a nauseous combatant to the trickles of the liquor. “What suddenly makes you the expert on my love life?”

“Ooh, we’ve upgraded to love, have we?” Gayle gives a soft whistle under her breath, cocking another smile. “You’re even more of an idiot for staying behind, then.”

“I swear, if you don’t—”

“She came over.” Gayle’s amused demeanor slows, this time the level of her eyes is more gentle. “Last night. She came to my room after you made an ass of yourself, and she left early this morning. In case you were worried and actually thinking of someone other than yourself for once, she’s fine. I hooked her up with a flight, it landed in the city half an hour ago.”

The core of the remark digs under her sternum like thorns, and she finds herself suddenly wishing for a pair of sunglasses to mask how she blinks away the returning sting of guilt. “Good,” Lena forces out evenly. “That’s good, thank you for doing that. And I didn’t make an _ ass _ of myself, I hardly said anything.”

“Mm, and I get the feeling that’s exactly your issue.”

Lena turns sharply on the blonde again, the words rushing out before she can cap it in. “Just because I gave you a sparknotes rundown of a fling from two years ago, don’t think for one second that you know the first thing about me.”

Gayle, to her credit, couldn’t take less offense to Lena’s underlying venom. “And why do you keep acting like you still even care about what happened? You talk like she means nothing to you, and then you bring her on a world-class, romantic getaway and look at her like she hung up the fucking moon in the sky.”

The sun, Lena thinks distantly. 

If Kara were the creator of anything in this world, it would be the sun.

“Of course I care about her.” Lena’s face hardens. “That’s exactly why I won’t chase after her.”

Gayle sighs, her eye-roll exaggerated and skimming on boredom. “Please, enlighten me, what emotionally repressed, self-deprecating reason do you have for this one?”

“You wouldn’t understand.” 

“Try me.”

“Because all I do is _ hurt _ her.” Lena squeezes her eyes shut, pressing the heel of her palm to her burning eyes.

“Stop that, your makeup’s already pitiful enough.” Gayle swats at her hand. “What are you on about now?”

“Even before all of this, she was miserable every moment we spent together and I had no idea!” Lena lets out an incredulous laugh if only to mask the choke of a sob, because she is just so _ tired _ of crying. “Because of me, she was forced to question everything she ever knew about herself, just the existence of me in her life haunted her for months. And then, now, what kind of person tortures someone they love like this? Strings them along like something will change just for the impossible chance that it’d make me sleep better at night when I’m gone?”

“Oh god,” Gayle groans in disgust, stealing back the glass of vodka. “I think I’m the one who needs this.”

“When am I going to just face the fact that she has always been so much significantly happier when I _ wasn’t _ in her life?

“Okay, you know what? Fine.” Gayle quickly slurps the drink down to the ice, smacking her lips together. “You saying you don’t deserve her? Is that your angle now?”

“Of course I don’t.” Lena, in turn, plucks the champagne from Gayle’s other hand. “What good have I ever brought her?”

“Christ, Lena, then just be the person who brings her good. Don’t give me any of this martyr bullshit that you’re letting her walk away because you think it’s in her best interest. You know what that girl wants from you?”

Lena doesn’t answer, she tips her head back and lets the champagne pour back.

“She wants you to step up and choose her. You think you’re not enough, that she deserves better? Then suck up your shit, and _ be _ the person she deserves.”

“And what would you know about deserving someone?” Lena snaps with a sour laugh. “Maybe you should take your own advice, Gayle. You’re awfully keen to tell me what to do for someone who is so pathetically alone that even your father can’t afford to buy you company because you’re too much of a selfish wreck for anyone to bother sticking around.”

She doesn’t know why she’s being cruel, why she thinks this might dull the ache. 

Gayle scoffs, but bitterness underlies it. Lena knows that even the heiress isn’t impenetrable, and, somehow, it’s justifying to know that if Lena has nothing else, she is at least wicked enough to be that piercing blade.

The blonde’s tone is solid, hard like stone. “You want to be alone, go ahead. You’ve got every right. But you don’t get to blame the universe or peg it off as just the way you are, because at the end of the day, you decide how this goes. You better live with that choice.”

When Gayle goes to the bar again and doesn’t return to Lena’s side for the rest of the ceremony, Lena gets it. When she sits between strangers, just to watch another pair of strangers promise each other a forever that may not exist, Lena knows. When they pitch off the slope and careen down the mountain in magical unison, with the athletic expertise of two lovers who’ve taken the dive, and Lena just returns to an empty hotel room that still smells of marshmallows, she understands.

When the flight back to National City is taken in quiet, save for the scratches of Lena’s pen on the rest of the CVs and the pads of Gayle’s thumbs on her phone, Lena understands just one thing.

It’s that she maybe never understood a damn thing at all.

xx

She lasts five days back into her regular routine.

She conducts interviews, both in person and over video calls. She dresses in suits crisply tailored to hide her loneliness. She shakes hands with men and women she’ll never see again, already knowing they’re not fit to run this branch before they’ve even finished with pleasantries. She eats lunch alone at her desk, limp salads or chalky protein shakes that Jane drops off, conveniently always while Lena is on the phone as if to avoid any forced exchange of small-talk with her. Somehow this is lonelier than anything else, the wonder for when she became the sort of boss whose employees were afraid of her, for how long Lena has been pretending this wasn’t always the case.

She has room service bring her a bottle of scotch, yet even this feels imposing and inconvenient, making someone come all the way up her private elevator just to indulge her woes when surely they have so many better things to be doing.

She thinks to call Sam, but with this comes the nauseating disgust of realizing that she has no idea what her best friend is even up to these days, how Lena never asked about how Ruby’s basketball game went, how she didn’t even know Ruby played basketball in the first place — so this, too, stops her, and Lena drinks from the bottle alone in her room, with only the light and company of the television to illuminate her perpetual need for self-pity within a bittersweet sweet safeguard like solitude.

She lasts five days.

xx

So, just, whatever.

There’s nothing left to lose at this point.

It’s over either way. 

xx

**Lena Luthor: In the Aftermath of a National Tragedy, Comes Hope**

**January 5th, 2020 — By Kara Danvers**

We met in a bar. That’s where most people meet these days, isn’t it?

Though, I should preface: she didn’t know she was about to meet me, and, likewise, I was wholeheartedly unprepared for the person I would soon come to know. Forget research, because what the internet has to say about Lena holds nothing against the real thing. The infamous Luthor’s sister that I pictured in my head was just a blurry, mirrored replica of her brother. I imagined only a younger version of Lex, just maybe with a bit more hair. 

Underestimating Lena Luthor was a mistake I plan to never make again. If you have any desire for the success of this world, you won’t either.

Off the bat, I’m charmed, but it has nothing to do with flattery. Lena’s never needed a back pocket arsenal of compliments to be liked; it couldn’t be clearer that she is not a “slick, cunning diabolist” who relies on “manipulative psychology to convince an unsuspecting society that she offers sweet riches and innocent smiles when she is really just a toxic parasite feeding on the impressionable naivetée of youth today” (People Weekly, 2019). I really do love the things you can find on the internet, sometimes, don’t you? 

I love even more the chance to prove them wrong. 

No, Lena doesn’t need a liberal arts degree in manipulation to charm people. She is just the kind of person who you inexplicably want to impress, and yet winning her approval is as simple as telling her a tired, old joke found on a 2013 Reddit thread. She inspires you to strive for more, and she cherishes any step you’re willing to take.

I know this is all fairly vague, but bear with me. We’re just getting started.

Soon after her move to National City, Lena quickly picked up a research position at Spheerical Industries in their oncology department, with fellow MIT-alumn Samantha Arias. About a week into her start at SI, I spoke with Lena on the phone briefly. I could hear the faint hum of the breakroom coffee machine undoubtedly churning out her fifth espresso of the day as she relayed to me the details of her first project on isolating a particular protein from amphibian cells for further study. Naturally, I made a futile attempt to convince her that she can’t rush genius. Her answer to this was simple. I could hear the smile in her voice, the confident yet humble determination even over the phone. When I told her it takes more than a few days to change the world, there was no need to try and change my mind. She just said, “Watch me.”

And watch her, I did. Even when no one else was, even when you, especially, should have been. 

Many of us have already read about some of her latest work. On December 5th, Lena Luthor did the impossible. She accomplished what not even a protagonist of a science-fiction blockbuster could ever dream of achieving. This miraculously quick solution for curing the autoimmune disorder that backlashed from her brother’s failed cancer treatment becomes Lena Luthor’s first publicized achievement. It received substantial acclaim across scientific journals and has brought notable attention and investments to SI, though naturally not without a rising swarm of conspiracy theories villainizing her intentions. I am not the first to praise Lena for this outstanding stroke of genius, for how she saved hundreds if not thousands of lives at risk, and undoubtedly I will not be the last. 

I am, however, the first to propose that this was not her first noteworthy contribution to society.

To back up my claims, I have to first properly address the lack of information online about Lena.1Aside from her family’s notable wealth and their history of scientific research, as well as her relationship with “New Dawn'' star Siobhan Smythe, there just is little no reliable resources disclosing who she is or the life she’s led, certainly nowhere near as many as there are on her brother. You might argue that it’s only fair, given that he was, at least a year ago, the one known for great scientific discoveries, whereas Lena had yet to do anything news-worthy. I’d counter that by saying, let’s go back a few years. Before the Neoremedium, before a stunt in Hollywood, before university — back to the beginning.

The year is 2002. Now, twenty-one year-old Lex Luthor was remarkable for a few things at this time, all very easy to verify with a quick Google search. He held the then-current US record for the fastest Rubik’s cube solution time, was the second ranking flute player of the east coast, and, as of yet, unpublished (he didn’t begin to write his famous debut manuscript on the interactions of zinc and sulfur within the body until twenty-two). Even still, Lex was a prevalent figure at this time. You can find numerous interviews with him discussing his internships at LuthorCorp, he appeared in newscasts and media covers at several public events beside his father, and the Metropolis Zoology Society awarded him on live television for his adoption of a colony of crabeater seals in Antarctica.

Lena’s narrative is less visible. This took a bit more digging, though it was an adventure I was thrilled to take on. In her formative years, Lena didn’t spend much time within her family’s spotlight, and it wasn’t until she finished her studies at MIT and publicly announced her relationship with Smythe on the actress’s Instagram Live story that the media noticed her much at all. In fact, there’s almost zero mention of a Lena Luthor at all before then,2 not anything more than an occasional footnote to the Luthor name. On the other hand, there was a very community-involved, faceless young philanthropist local to Metropolis by the name of Lena Kieran. She had already been fighting for a greater good for years, without a camera pointed at her, known only through word of mouth. If the name sounds familiar, it might be because of a Twitter post from 2018 in which Smythe posted a happy-birthday message for Lena, thanking an unknown “Mama Kieran” for “birthing this beautiful f***ing woman.” The post was quickly deleted. This naturally caused a spike of speculation online for the few months following, but after a lack of comment from both the couple and the Luthor family, the rumor laid to rest.

Luthor name aside, we just have a few numbers. In a large town just outside the district of Mount Helena Boarding school, where Lena attended until 2005, a local soup kitchen kept thorough volunteer logs. On request, they (begrudgingly) faxed me over scans of these logs over this three-year period.3 Lena _ Kieran _ logged two hundred and forty-seven hours here, a course of volunteer work that ended at the same time that Lena Luthor graduated Mount Helena at fifteen years old. Even more, the same soup kitchen, along with a local domestic violence shelter and an underfunded children’s hospital just outside the city, all show numerous fundraisers over the years led by a high-school student named only as Kieran (no first name given). The paper described her as “a loyal, generous team member who has donated countless days and nights to these programs,” but without any elaboration to her background or any other affiliations (The Daily Planet, 2004). Even further, there was a substantially large, anonymous donation made to said hospital in 2005, but four months later, the Luthor family spontaneously claimed credit for this contribution, announcing publicly that their eldest Lex was behind the initiative. Strangely, there is no record of a Lex Luthor in the volunteer logs, nor anyone even with the same first name. 

I’m noticing a pattern. Are you?

So Lena was charitable in her youth — why should we care now? You might ask if I plan to write a feature on every young teenager who has ever volunteered for a shelter. Why is Lena Luthor special, and what was she doing in her seven year break between MIT and her move to National City, the most publicized period of her career? Aside from living a supposed “vain existence that only piggybacked off the frivolous stardom of her more-famous girlfriend without any actual worthwhile input to the world herself,” that is (Entertainment Gossip, 2019). Lena herself even once jokingly referred to herself as a “glorified groupie” in an interview, which some took as validation to imply that Lena spent all of her time sitting in green rooms, twiddling her thumbs, waiting for Smythe to return (E! News, 2017).

I’ll admit my bias — I am _ more _ than happy to report that this wasn’t the case.

In 2013, Lena featured in hit music video _ Just Another Girl _for American rock band The Killers. It is public knowledge that record label Island Def Jam matched two cents for every YouTube stream, and donated these proceeds to Women In Music, a nonprofit organization for advancing opportunities and cultural aspects of women in the musical arts. The total profits amounted to $108,184. 

I recently had the chance to speak with lead singer Brandon Flowers over the phone about the great donation.4 “It was all Lena’s idea,” he was quick to tell me. And the label agreed, just like that? “I mean, I’d been wanting to do something like that for a while, but didn’t know how to convince the execs, and so when she agreed to only do the video on the condition that we use this as a chance to help aspiring artists, it just made the whole thing that much easier to swing with the label.” With a laugh, he added, “You have no idea how much those guys wanted her for that video, think they would’ve upped to a dollar per view if she’d asked.” If Lena was so central to the implementation of this fundraiser, why didn’t the public know about it? “I’m actually not sure about that one. I know she asked for her name to not be on the official campaign, but otherwise, honestly? No one ever asked.”

I imagine this is starting to sound redundant.

I’ve spoken with various others who have crossed paths with Lena over the next six years, from Smythe’s fellow castmates, crew, and talkshow hosts that bonded with Lena backstage while Smythe was between commercials for her interview onstage, to other bands the couple came into contact with. While I would love to share every bit of praise they all had to share, that would take up an entire story of its own, and so I must summarize instead with their keypoints. Lena is described to be “an absolute joy to work with” (Cloyd, 2019) for many reasons, including a “constant optimism and boundless energy” (Graves, 2019) she always brought to sets and, of course, her “insane loyalty for [Smythe]” which Lena displayed by “always being fiercely devoted to making sure Siobhan always got the best gigs, the best jobs, and nothing short of the excellence she knew her girlfriend deserved” (Simmons, 2019). Along with being a morally-sound, generous benefactor to society, we can also add a reliable friend, an uplifting joy to be around, and strategic marketing management to Lena’s ever-growing list of admirable, mysterious qualities.5

Contrary to popular belief that Lena spent these years exclusively focused on Smythe’s work, the name Lena Kieran resurfaces again, after having been dormant during her higher-education years. As the couple travels back and forth across the country, the name Kieran comes up countless times in the donation records of various charities, both national and local along a trail that follows their movements. Kieran’s biggest donations over the years were split between two major programs, one being the Community United Against Violence, America’s first LGBTQ anti-violence organization, along with other IPV nonprofits. The second was ArtLifting, a fairly novel initiative that began in Boston in 2013, which serves to provide artists living with homelessness or disabilities a platform to sell and celebrate their works. An article in The Boston Globe theorized that it is thanks to Kieran’s consistent financial support over the next four years that the initiative was able to so quickly expand to nineteen other major cities, a feat they projected to take at least ten years, and were eager to get in contact with Kieran, but never quite managed to.

After Smythe’s 2018 slip-up tweet, the name ceases to appear in public record.

To at least prove that Lena Luthor isn’t actually an enchantress who has bewitched me into idolizing her, I will admit that I was slightly apprehensive at this point. I could understand why Lena might have kept her side-projects anonymous when she was younger; she either craved privacy and was eager to keep out of a limelight that already captured her family, or she expected that her family would not have endorsed her efforts. LuthorCorp wasn’t ever exactly known for its charity work, one of the greatest criticisms against the major research company that I discuss in more detail in my previous article: “The Massacre that Won A Pulitzer” (2019). My question now is that, if Lena has already emerged into the public eye, away from the Luthor estate, why does she continue to use an alias?

I found the answer without ever having to ask the question, more than enough times over, right in front of me.

One morning early in November, we stood in line at a Starbucks in midtown, squeezing in a conversation before her 8 a.m. shift. After paying for our coffees, Lena left her gift card with the barista and an off-handed instruction to use whatever was left on the card for the next customer. I almost didn’t notice the interaction, I was mostly busy trying to figure out why a Starbucks macchiato is just an upside-down latte. It wasn’t until Lena quickly ushered us out the door to enjoy our drinks elsewhere that I realized, and we were already a block away by the time I asked why we weren’t staying.6 My first guess was that perhaps was eager to not be recognized by the barista, having been focused on her low-profile since Lex’s trials. Lena seemed embarrassed before she answered, enough so that I wondered whether she would explain at all. 

“You celebrate Christmas, don’t you?” she asked instead. “Did your parents ever tell you that your presents were from Santa?” Of course, I was raised on a tower of lies. “And it was disappointing when you found out he wasn’t real, right?” Sure, I cried for an hour. “Why?” Despite how I couldn’t come up with any good reason, I was still defensive about such a childhood tragedy. “It’s because a gift is nicer when it comes from nowhere. There’s no expectation to thank someone. A gift from a jolly old man whose life purpose is to give children gifts? You don’t feel guilty, not the way you do when your friend pays for an expensive meal.” I’m following her so far, but I can’t say that I ever felt guilty at seven years old about rising PlayDough prices. 

“It’s about the feeling that something so good exists,” she explained. “When you find out Santa isn’t real, you realize that this magical thing you thought about the world was never true.” But that’s just a given with growing up, whether you celebrate Christmas or not. “But why does it have to be?”

This is about the part that I started to understand what Santa Clause has to do with my caramel upside-down latte. 

“I don’t need the credit for that. I know it’s not much, just one coffee, but if starting your day with a little bit of magic can make any different to someone, then… that magic should be theirs to keep. I don’t want to stick around and make them share it.” Lena’s eyes beamed with modest sincerity, her eyes were alight with optimism. If I were a photographer with an eye for capturing the true personality of a person, I would have snapped dozens of shots as soon as Lena raised her cortado to her lips. This is who Lena Luthor is. Someone truly excited to share joy with the world.7

It wasn’t always about the money, either. Over the course of the few months I was gifted to spend getting to know Lena, there were moments throughout that only cemented my curious admiration. Without straying too close to the typical “Celebrities! They’re just like us!” tagline, I will say that Lena Luthor does not exude the frivolous vanity of a spoiled socialite in any regard. Even when she does, she has all these small, endearing ways of skipping around them. The first time I watched Lena attempt to start a dishwasher, someone who learned to completely disassemble a car engine by the age of twelve, was an admittedly amusing experience, but she was insistent on following it through. Considering that Lena gags at so much as scooping food scraps from the sink drain, it floored me just how determined she was to help me with the rather unpleasant tasks around my apartment I rarely had the time or patience to take care of. Forget the fact that she herself regularly worked sixty-hour weeks. She managed to fix my grimy, nine-year-old vacuum with ancient hairballs clogging the tubes, replaced the leaky piping behind my toilet, fixed every squeaky, rusted door hinge in my apartment, and much, much more.8

There is something curiously respectable about someone so brilliant and powerful, with more than enough resources to simply hire someone else to fix my ratty apartment, but taking the time to do it herself.

I suppose I could have asked Lena point-blank why she used an alias all those years, but this is a more reliable testimony to her character, isn’t it? I’ve found that whenever someone asks me about the kind of person I am, I’m more likely to describe someone I wish I were. 

There’s plenty more I could say about Lena, and there’s perhaps plenty here that was needless to tell you. I have rambled on with flattering bias, presented you with mostly unproved speculation, and I am diving head-first into an incredibly controversial stance. I understand that, and I recognize the irony of encouraging you to embrace all the prosperity a Luthor has to offer after being the very person to condemn one. I merely am asking you to take a moment, observe the information I present to you now, and reconsider the possibility that there is more to Lena than meets the eye.

We’re left with a woman who accelerated Smythe’s career with strategic business negotiations and clever marketing methods, a woman who has spent nearly two decades strengthening the foundations of our society without once ever attempting a claim for credit. I truly don’t think there’s anything that could crush her resilience. A bartender bothers her with cheap jokes and talks her ear off all night when she’s just looking for some time alone, and she tips a hundred dollars. Her brother is responsible for the death of hundreds, and for that she has been ridiculed, villainized, physically harassed, and entirely ostracized for the DNA they share — yet she continues to walk among us. The phone rings because you need her help and she answers to give you everything she has.

When I met Lena Luthor in that bar, nothing could have prepared me for this remarkable, empowering woman with all the privilege and money to ignore the torments of the world, but only a desire to wield it for good. It’s hard not to be intimidated by such an impressively dynamic woman, but it’s not her power-laced last name, her witty vernacular or even her tailored Silvia Tcherassi dress. It’s the honor of being in her very presence.

I expected a traditional interview and a quick fluff piece. I didn’t expect a friend, and I certainly didn’t expect National City to have its very own unnamed hero right under our noses.

Lena is destined for great things. Not because of fate, and not dependent on our approval of her. Lena will always rise to the occasion of good, because she has harnessed an aged secret of youth that never deteriorated from the grim turmoil of age, one she intends to share with the world whether we’re ready for it or not.

With Lena Luthor, comes hope.

Endnotes

  1. On a tangential but completely relevant sidenote, Lena was an adorable baby, and I did find a photo of her at a ballet recital in a March 1996 issue from The Daily Planet.
  2. There is one mention of Lena Luthor in 1999, who was officially declared a bowling prodigy by the APA, and went on to become a three-time national champion in her undergraduate at MU. I learned this only _after_ making the mistake of going up against her.
  3. Yes, faxed, and yes, I had to dig around an old supply closet of CatCo for an hour to find a still-functioning one.
  4. I only fangirled a little bit.
  5. Smythe declined to comment.
  6. In my defense, it was far too early in the morning to do much of anything but sit still in the warmth of indoors for twenty minutes and wait for the caffeine to kick in.
  7. Later, after Lena had gone off to work, I rounded back to the same Starbucks. The gift card that she had supposedly claimed to be “nearly empty” had five hundred dollars left on it.
  8. I’m obligated to state I was not bribed to report any of this information.

xx

“Lena? What are you doing here?”

Lena makes no move to shake off the rain as she pushes her hood back off her head. She remains still on the fringe of the office, stagnant, unable to step in further, while her mouth presses into a thin line.

Lillian immediately rises from behind her desk and winds around it, her brow furrowed with either anger or confusion, Lena can’t tell which. Perhaps both. 

“Hi,” is all the greeting Lena gives, voice thick, lips cold.

“Why aren’t you in National City?” she asks with the same intense tone she uses in the boardroom. “Is everything alright?”

It’s only been a little over two months since she’s seen Lillian, but it feels like years.

“Is there a reason I was never enough for you?”

Might as well get it over with.

Lillian stops short, her expression much more clearly perplexed now. 

“Was it something I did? Something I didn’t?” Lena doesn’t even undo her coat, just lets the droplets of the east-coast rain trickle down her temples and cheeks, dribble to the floor from her loose knuckles, only lays a careful mask over a voice that threatens to crack. “Did you see something in me that just made you know from the beginning I would always fall short?”

Maybe it’s how Lillian says nothing, how her posture straightens but her chin tips down at the same time, all the while her intense gaze utterly still and unreadable, but Lena stumbles on like she knows she’ll lose her nerve if she stops.

“Because I have this paralyzing fear that I might actually just be this hopelessly selfish, untrustworthy, ignorant, melodramatic wretch of a person, and any faith or confidence anyone has that I might be anything but is misplaced because I don’t even know how to maintain a single meaningful relationship without tearing apart everyone involved, either because I’m too absorbed with my own trivial problems to ever give a second thought to how my actions affect others or I’m just too naive and unaware of how the world works to think I could ever truly connect with another human being or offer anything worthwhile to this world that isn’t rooted in this ugly, dark _ thing _ rotting inside me.”

Lena swallows a shaky gulp of air, and she almost takes a moment to feel sorry for Lillian and her shock-stricken face, this dark confession Lena drops on her now like a bomb.

“So, I just mean to ask, did you know? That I was only ever meant to run a company, that it’s the only thing I’d ever be good for?”

Lillian’s eyes glance between Lena’s like the purposeful weight of a clocktower’s bell clashing back and forth. “Have you found your replacement yet?”

Lena can only wonder why she’s come looking for the exact opposite of the very thing her mother is only capable of giving.

“No.” She shakes her head, and her bottom lip twitches into a pitiful excuse of a smile. “Are you going to tell me I’m not very good at this, either? Considering this entire organization is based on the world believing the lie that I’m some selfless saving grace with a heart of gold, I’m not sure you would be wrong.”

Lillian’s frown only deepens. She drops her eye, and she gestures to the two guest chairs in front of her desk, a wordless motion before she turns around herself. Lena has half a mind to turn around and go straight back to the airport, has little to no interest in sitting across the desk from her mother like any other investor or client, not when she knows this entire trip was futile and only serves to prove her point.

But to her surprise, Lillian doesn’t sit in her own leather throne. She leans down for a low drawer, the bottom filing cabinet, and just as languidly she returns with a plain, ceramic mug and a bottle of Monkey 47 gin, a label Lena recognizes as easily as she would the walls of the house she grew up in.

Setting the bottle on the edge of the desk closest to the two chairs with a gentle thud, Lillian only looks to Lena expectantly.

Her face is dry of any tears, but Lena still feels the sheepish flush of needing to wipe her face all the same as she trails deeper into the office, taking the chair, and her mother smoothly follows. A soft sigh under her breath, Lillian leans forward to pour a dollop of the clear liquor into the mug, her movements slow and precise in a way that reminds Lena both of how young and old her mother is.

Lillian holds the mug out to Lena, but a wry laugh escapes her mouth like a gasp, and she shakes her head. “Better that I don’t, honestly.”

With little to no reaction, Lillian keeps it for herself, and the sip she takes from the cup is done as indifferently as if she were drinking water alone in this room.

The silence — save for the faint patter of rain against the office windows and the hiss of the infamous Metropolis wind tunnels rattling the panes — is taxing on Lena’s shoulders, leaves her hyper aware of her knitted hands in her lap, the pinch of her mother’s mouth. It makes her painfully conscious of the soft brush of clothing against the chair’s cushioning as she shifts in her seat, of the taste of her tongue in her dry mouth, of the misguided ghost that lives in her body and manifests itself in the sagging, hollow of her eyes.

Lillian watches her with a curious stare, more patient than Lena’s ever known her to be, and she’s just about to think that Lillian will make her be the one to break the silence again when she speaks.

“You visited your brother,” she says simply.

Lena blinks. “What?”

“Before.” She nods to the side, a vague motion. “When you were living in National City.”

“Oh. Um, yes, I did.”

“How was he?”

“How— what?” Lena’s frown sinks further. “You haven’t seen him?”

Lillian gives a minute shake of her head, her gaze trailing along to the cloudy windows. “No. Not since his trial.”

This, Lena almost doesn’t believe. The Golden Boy, the apple of her eye, the future of this family. Of course Lex royally fucked up and forever changed the Luthor name, but Lena had been so certain that it changed nothing, at least not in Lillian’s eyes. She had fought for her son until the very end, every testimony she gave was in his defense. The notion that it’s been two years since she so much as looked him in the eye is rattling.

Lena can’t decide if this woman before her is familiar or a stranger. “Why?”

She answers with indifferent ease. “I’m not sure what I would say to him.”

“Anything?” Lena winces. “I don’t think there’s really a standard approach to addressing your incarcerated son.”

An odd touch of something that resembles a smile peaks at the edge of Lillian’s mouth, but it’s empty, almost sarcastic. “Yes, that's right. I could say… anything at all.”

Lena wonders if maybe she does have some blood relation to Lillian, if arrogant apathy is genetic.

Lillian looks away from the window to Lena again with an expression that is both serious and distant. “I don’t know what to say to my son because he is not the man I thought I raised him to be. I worry that the person I would go to see is not who I expect, and I worry more that it will be who he has always been.”

Lena swallows, knows she doesn’t need to ask. “What does this have to do with me?”

“You are not who I raised you to be, Lena.”

It still sucker-punches the wind out of her, and Lillian tops it off with a smile that she could only ever dream of reading. Her mother tilts her head candidly, the lines of fatigue at the corners of her eyes more prominent than ever.

“That’s why I don’t know how to address you. I haven’t recognized you for such a long time now. And, just like him, I’m afraid this is who you have always been.”

Throat tight like barbed chains clench around it, Lena can barely push through this childish shame. “Can you please just tell me what I did wrong? What is it that I’ve done to disappoint you so much?”

“Oh, Lena.” The lilt of amusement under Lillian’s words is devastating enough for Lena to consider this is just another nightmare she’s under no obligation to remember. “You still _ love _. And I thought I taught you better than that.”

The throb of her chest doesn’t feel like love, she shakes her head in her struggle to understand. “No, you did right by that one, I don’t think I know how to do that at all.”

“Is this about that girl?” Lillian takes a sip of her gin, eyebrows poised innocently like she’s inquiring about Lena’s weekend plans. “Has she hurt you again?”

Lena laughs wetly, dropping her head. “No, god. I mean, yes, I’m… but well, I’m the one who—”

A dizzying recollection, Kara’s blue eyes wide and terrified of hope like it was a double-edged blade dripping with poison, like Lena isn’t just as hypocritically afraid, this doesn’t taste a thing like hope. 

“It doesn’t matter.” Lena screws her eyes shut as she regathers her bearings. “She’s gone, and I’m coming back to Metropolis.”

“Then what brings you here now?”

“This isn’t about her, it’s about me and how I should have learned by now not to take up so much space for myself, because that’s not love, that’s not it at all. Not even just for her, but my friends, my employees — anyone who has ever reached a hand out to me, I’ve just gone ahead and taken the whole limb.” Lena lifts her head up, bottom lip twisting with a grimace. “Even you. What have I ever given to you? I come to you asking why you don’t believe in me like a child when I’ve never given you a reason to in the first place.”

She wants to say the turn of Lillian’s mouth is pensive, the haze of her eyes thoughtful, but Lena still can’t rule out that this isn’t all just a dream.

“When I was young, much younger than you,” Lillian starts, ignoring Lena’s words, leaning back into her seat with a languid ease like they have all day. “There was a boy I knew from a diner my friends and I used to visit. He was a year older than me, and… he loved me. But he wasn’t from my circle of friends. He waited tables, lived in the projects, he wasn’t what my parents expected for me. So, I let him go. And I wish I could tell you that, every day since, not a day has gone by that I don’t regret it, but the truth is that he tried again, many times over the following years, and time and time again, I stood by that same decision.”

Lena frowns, her stomach churning with a much different discomfort this time. “What happened?”

The pale glow of the cloudy sky reflects ghoulishly across Lillian’s face. “I married your father. But to him? I still don’t know.”

“Why didn’t I know about this?”

She turns back. “Because when I was your age, my mother told me I would understand when I was older. And for a very long time, I thought I did, and I have always told you the same.”

“Understand what?”

Lillian chuckles dryly, taking a longer sip of her drink. “We live lives far too complicated for something so binary as understanding. That gives us too much credit, to think our minds are capable of that stretch. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I… I really don’t know what—”

“I’ve never quite known how to be your mother,” Lillian sighs. “Not when Lionel first brought you in, and not two years ago when you called. A part of me thought perhaps that you might be better off without one than to have…”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” Lena says when Lillian trails off, this time with more fervor than before.

“Because mother or not, I haven’t been what you needed. I raised you to be suspicious and distrusting, not only of others but of your own worth. I raised you to doubt. And, somehow, I’ve come to realize I have a daughter who is strong, bright, and miraculously _ gracious _. You open your heart for others so instinctually, and… I’ve nearly broken you for my inability to open my own. But I haven’t. She is still just as strong, just as bright, and just as gracious as ever. She simply forgot to believe in herself, to believe in the grace she is capable of bringing to others.”

Lillian smiles, this one unlaced with humor or a sarcastic indifference, this one just almost on the brink of tender if Lena didn’t know better.

“Because if the rest of this family stands steadily in darkness, you will always fall into the light.”

“Why now?” Lena’s mouth parts open, just as the splinters of her ribcage fall, and she looks up to her mother with the same wide, terrified eyes she bore as a child. “Why have you waited until now to tell me this?”

“There’s only one thing a mother fears more than watching her children fail to succeed,” Lillian says in a low drawl. “And it’s that you do, far beyond anywhere I was able to go. That you are nothing like the woman I tried to mould you into? That you resisted and became someone greater? I have never known how I would accept that.”

“And what if I’m exactly who you wanted?”

Lillian barks a laugh, a sharp contrast to the surreal quiet of this office, and despite the heavy drag of Lena’s heart, the sound somehow brings the peak of a smile to her face, lightens this load.

“I should clarify, I never specifically wanted you to be miserable with yourself.”

“Then what? Find pleasure in being cold and heartless?”

“Always with the dramatics.” But Lillian’s smile is fond, one Lena can’t recognize. “You aren’t heartless, Lena. The very fact you’ve come here, worrying whether you are or not, should tell you that.”

“It still doesn’t— _ I _ still don’t feel like enough for the people I want to be enough for.”

“You’re looking for an answer that will magically reveal the right thing to do, but there is none. You just need to try harder. There’s nothing more to it.”

“And if even that isn’t enough?”

Lillian’s incessant tone borders on impatience now. “Then you learn, and you try again. Because if they’re worth it, then it is just as much for yourself as it is for them. If you love her, it is worth it.”

Lena’s gaze hardens, the pit in her stomach weighs lower. “I told you this isn’t about her.”

A smirk pulls her mother’s mouth. “And I didn’t say a name.”

“You know, this is why I’ve always referred to you as the devil incarnate.”

“And here I thought you might be more creative than that.”

They share a quiet laugh, and this time, Lena acquiesces and takes the drink from her mother’s grasp. When she settles back in her seat, fingers looped around the mug like it offers the same comfort as a warm coffee would, Lena leans back in her seat, and Lillian levels her with an amused but stern expression.

“You should tell her.”

Lena looks down at the small level of clear liquor still left, runs her index finger along the rim. “Tell her what?”

Lillian sighs, though this one isn’t impatient, just a release of control. “If this… foolish girl loves you, and you love her, that’s all that matters.” 

Lena meets her mother’s eye again, biting her tongue.

_ “That _ is the most important thing, and the work can wait. If you hold that, you will find your answer. Everything else can wait.”

“But it can’t,” Lena says with another choked laugh. “I'm coming back in less than two weeks.”

“I know I have led you to believe that your emotions will be the death of your success, but I was wrong. This organization will not fail because you choose to follow your heart. I believe it is standing by your dedication to who you are that will make it prosper.”

“But—” Lena shakes her head, licks her lips. “Our whole plan, this year, we don’t have the time.”

Lillian narrows her eyes with a wry smile. “We’re two powerful, brilliant Luthor women, Lena. I think we can figure out an adjustment or so.”

When Lena says nothing more, her eyes dropping to somewhere sightless, somewhere beyond this room, as these words flutter and bounce around like soft-edged echoes, Lillian stands. She brushes the faint lines of her dress pants, clearing her throat like the final note of a meeting coming to an end, winding around to her side of the desk, and Lena watches her go.

“Did you love him, too?” Lena asks quickly. When Lillian only tilts her head in confusion, she elaborates. “The one your parents disapproved of. Did you love him?”

Like the rest of her questions, this still only sparks a smile, and it’s no surprise that Lillian doesn’t answer, only waves her off dismissively as she sinks back into her seat. “Go on, then. You’ve wasted enough of our money coming all the way out here on company time, you do still have a day job.”

But the return of that nagging bite only makes Lena’s shoulders loosen now as she, too, stands, and the familiarity is a comfort.

A part of her knew, with the utmost certainty, that coming here would be a mistake. Deep down, Lena knew Lillian would smite down any notion of Lena’s melodramatic hopes and fears, she would tell Lena to ignore all these distractions and hurry on with what really mattered. 

Maybe that’s why she really came, to be told that it is in her position at L-Corp that her value stems from. That to be socially inept and incapable of loving without ruin isn’t relevant, that it’s a far smarter existence than vulnerability. If there’s anyone that could deliver this message loud and clear, it’s Lillian.

And it’s strange, really, that she‘s also the one person who might convince her otherwise.

She’s halfway to the door when she stops, a pinch of newfound appreciation lingering in her chest.

Lena turns around. “Mom?”

Lillian lifts her head, the surprise almost hidden in her trademark, stone-still eyes. 

“You should visit Lex. You may not know what to say, but.” Lena swallows, her throat stiff, but her smile relieved. “You do alright on the spot.”

xx

It’s when Lena is on her way back from the airport, the first roots of odd overlapping ideas beginning to form in her mind, that she pulls out her phone.

It rings four times before the other line answers.

_ “Hello?” _

“Hey, it’s Lena. I need a favor.”

_ “When have you ever called me for anything else?” _

Lena bites her lip, watching a city that she only is just starting to think of home now that she is leaving it.

“You won’t like it, and you’re going to say no. But I think you’ll thank me later for it.”

xx

When Gayle sees her, Lena’s convinced she can see the roll of her eyes even through the dark sunglasses, and the blonde just looks back down to her phone, fingers flying across the screen.

Lena takes the seat at the restaurant table opposite her, feeling a pang of regret for the icy demeanor that she absolutely deserves, but also an endeared appreciation for how Gayle never changes.

“What do you want, Luthor?”

“To apologize.”

Gayle snorts. “You came to the wrong person for that.”

“Forget about Kara for a second.” Lena brushes her hair behind her ear, the corner of her mouth lifting into a smile. “I do have to warn you, you’re going to hate every word that’s about to come out of my mouth.”

“So don’t say shit, then.”

A waiter stops by to check in with Lena, offering her a menu, but Lena politely declines. “I’m not staying, but thank you.”

“How’d you even know where to find me?”

Turning her attention back to Gayle, Lena nods at her phone. “TMZ can be useful on occasion.”

This piques Gayle’s interest, and she pushes her sunglasses back over her head to reveal tired, hungover eyes that squint under the fluorescence of the restaurant and the daylight through the windows, though they flicker with more excitement than apprehension. “They posted about me? What did they say? Are they waiting outside?”

“No, and I’ll send you the link later.” Lena takes a deep breath as she regathers her thoughts, centering for the reason she came. “Look, I didn’t expect to like you. At all. I didn’t have any intention to ever see you again after the gala, and I thought you were vapid, shallow, and thankless for just about everything in your life.”

This causes Gayle to raise her eyebrows, Lena can just make out how she sneakily looks at Lena now.

“I thought you were the literal embodiment of everything I was afraid I was becoming.” Lena sits up straighter, clawing past the embarrassed blush of her neck. “And then I realized you weren’t, and I resented that. I’m sorry for what I said to you, it wasn’t true or fair to you. You have this balance of living so carefree, for yourself and no one else, and yet you still manage to look after the people you care about. Because you do, you care about others and you make an effort for them.”

“You’re right, I do hate this,” Gayle grumbles under her breath, tipping her head over the back of her chair.

“You care about me. And I’m not very good at being cared about, or giving it in return. I’m working on that. We barely know each other, and you’ve already done more for me in a few months than I’ve done for anyone in years. So, thank you. I’m telling you that I’ve noticed, and it’s not something I’m going to forget.”

“This is all really unnecessary.” Gayle grimaces with embarrassed distaste. “You’re owning up to being a bitch, great, that’s all you gotta say. We’re not gonna have some sappy moment where we share how much we mean to each other.”

Lena smiles. “You’re right. _ We _ aren’t.”

Gayle’s eyes narrow even further when Lena rises to her feet.

“I bought you an hour.”

There’s no time or need for Lena to elaborate, because Gayle’s eyes flicker to somewhere just behind Lena.

She steps to the side, away from the chair, and when she looks over, another woman still in her work clothes is approaching the table with an apprehensive mask of indifference, hands clasped in front of her.

“Hi,” Imra says stiffly, mechanically.

“I have to go, but you two have fun.” Lena nods over her shoulder, her smirk widening at the dumbfounded panic erupting in Gayle’s face, and even more so when the heiress scrambles to drag her sunglasses back down over her bloodshot eyes.

When Lena bows away with a light wave, she hears Gayle clear her throat, her voice shaky and stammering.

“You — you cut your hair. It uh, it looks nice.”

“I’ve been growing it out, actually.”

Lena smiles.

xx

“Oh, good, you’re here.” Sam leaves Lena standing in the open doorway, already rushing back to the kitchen, and she calls back over her shoulder, “I’m making lamb! Did you grab the wine?”

Lena glances down at the bottle of champagne in her hands as she shuts the door behind her, and purses her lips before opting to leave it in the front foyer where Sam won’t see it.

“No, sorry,” Lena lies, trailing into the kitchen after her. “Lamb, you said?”

Sam hums happily, bending forward over her knees to peak into the oven. “Thought we could use something nice to end the year. Knowing you, your idea of a special treat would be a scotch that costs more than my mortgage.”

Lena makes a note to not tell Sam later how much the champagne cost.

“Hm, could use another ten minutes or so.” Standing back up, Sam gives Lena a breathless smile, and shakes her head before pulling her into a hug. “Sorry, I’ve been running around like crazy. We have to go pick up Ruby from Becca’s house in half an hour if I want her home before the ball drops, so I wanted to take care of dinner first.”

“It’s alright,” Lena laughs, patting her friend on her back shoulder appeasingly. “Breathe. You’re fine, you have plenty of time.”

Sam swipes her hair from her eyes after pulling back, and inhales deeply. Once she’s settled her frantic, rushing energy, she motions for Lena to sit at one of the barstools, coming around to join her.

“You’re right, sorry,” Sam apologizes again, and at Lena’s chastising look, she laughs again and holds up her hands. “Okay, really, I’m done. Consider the food and my daughter completely forgotten about. How are you? What’s going on with L-Corp? Kara? When do you leave? I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.”

Lena winces. “I know, and I’m the one who should be apologizing for that.”

Sam waves a hand. “Nonsense, you’re living three separate lives in one, I’m just happy you’re here at all. So? Bring me up to speed, what’s going on?”

A laundry list of things Lena hasn’t told Sam about from the last few weeks begin to cycle through Lena’s mind, an endless loop running in circles for where she could possibly begin, what to start with, where it will go.

But.

Lena lays her hand on top of Sam’s over the granite countertop.

“Forget about me for a second. Tell me about you, how’s Ruby? What’s new around here?”

The corners of Sam’s eyes crinkle with her confused laugh. “What? Come on, you know I live vicariously through you and your drama.”

Lena is already shaking her head. “I don’t care, we’ll talk about me later. Right now, I want to hear about you.”

As surprised and uncertain as Sam looks, the skeptical way she tilts her head, she entertains Lena all the same, shaking her head as she recounts her last couple weeks, with a prefacing claim that it’s all nothing interesting. But it quickly snowballs into a longer rant, Sam’s eyes light up more as she goes further into detail about Ruby’s team winning their district winter tournament, about how a summer-league recruitment coach has been watching Ruby play and is interested in taking her on for training in the spring. His team is an exclusive program with selective try-outs, meant for younger athletes who show potential for an advanced future with basketball, priming for high school varsity and beyond, with an end-goal of athletic scholarships for college. Sam’s gestures and hand movements become more erratic the more passionate she gets, rambling about how proud she is of Ruby and excited for this chance. Sam talks about work, her latest advances and breakthroughs on projects Lena had no idea she was even working on, about an elite tech conference next month in San Diego that Spheerical Industries has been invited to speak at, which Sam was then selected as the company representative. Story after story, detail after detail, their half of the things that Sam shares with Lena now delve into an even longer conversation when Sam needs to supply background information connecting to events from over the last two years, showing just how absent Lena’s been in her friend’s life.

Guilt is an intimate companion of Lena’s these days, but she refuses to let it discourage her.

“Wow, Jesus, sorry, tell me to shut up.” Sam laughs, pulling herself out from her ramblings. But before Lena can assure her otherwise, scold her that Lena wants her to go on, Sam’s jerking with a start and scrambling from her seat for the oven, cursing all the way.

When she pulls the door open, a funnel of dark, acrid smoke pours out and floods towards the ceiling, and Sam swings a rag up in the air to dispel it away from the smoke alarm.

Face falling both with shame and disappointment, Sam turns to Lena with an adorable pout. “So, never mind on the lamb, we’re picking up a pizza.” Then, glancing at the clock above the stove, Sam jars again. “Fuck, we’re gonna be late. God, I can’t believe you let me talk for this long. Have you seen my keys?”

Lena hops off the barstool and takes her friend by the shoulders, reorienting her frazzled panic. “I need you to relax for two minutes.”

“Relax? We have six minutes to drive across town!”

“No, we don’t.”

Sam gives her a bewildered look, and tries to shake out of her grip, but Lena holds strong. “What are you talking about? Lena, get off me, we have to _ go.” _

“We _ don’t, _” Lena emphasizes once more, catching Sam’s eye with a stern look. “Listen, I already took care of Ruby, okay?”

“You — what?”

“I called Becca’s mom hours ago,” Lena explains finally. “Ruby’s staying with her tonight, just forget about the food.”

“Sorry, you did what? Why is she— what are we doing?”

Lena takes a deep, steeling breath of her own, clearing her throat. “It’s a surprise. You are right about one thing, though, we do have to go.”

“Okay,” Sam draws out with a knitted brow, still evidently confused. “Where are we going?”

“What part of a surprise is unclear? Here, put this on.” Lena pulls a red bandana from the back pocket of her jeans, holding it out.

Pursing her lips, Sam takes the cloth apprehensively. “I want to be annoyed, but you know how much I love surprises.”

Smiling once Sam’s positioned the blindfold and she leads her out the door, being sure to pick up the champagne on the way out, Lena rushes them through the rain, guiding her into the passenger side of Sam’s car, and then climbs into the driver’s seat herself.

Well, it’s like Sam said.

They should end the year on something nice.

xx

“Hey, thanks for coming out in the—”

Kara’s door swings open, but it’s Lucy that stands on the other side, an ecstatic grin immediately dropping to a comical jaw-drop, and before Lena can so much as get a word in, the door is slammed in their faces.

Lena blinks.

“What’s going on?” Sam asks for the sixth time. “Where are we? Who was that?”

Sighing, Lena turns, and she pushes the cloth back over Sam’s head, who blinks rapidly at the harsh hallway lighting as she gathers her surroundings.

When she realizes where they are, she is unsurprisingly far from pleased.

“Lena, what the fuck are we doing here? And why are you so _ wet? _”

“Well, you see—”

“When I said I live vicariously through you, I did _ not _ mean that I want to literally be here with you while you tell Kara goodbye.”

“That’s not—”

“Oh my god,” Sam gasps. “New Year’s Eve, Really? Of all days to be your last day with her, you had to pick one that is already emotionally charged for you two? Lena, are you insane? Or just an extreme masochist?”

“If you would just let me explain, then—”

“I can’t believe—”

“You wouldn’t have come—” 

“—you _ blindfolded _ me just for _ — _”

“—if you’d known where we—” 

Kara opens the door, and everything stills.

Eyes that Lena once thought were pale now glow with a long-since rejuvenated life, and Lena never thought she could find so much peace with the fact that this sparkling glint has nothing to do with her at all. It’s just Kara’s innate backbone, an indication of her resilience, something Lena should have seen so long ago.

Kara’s eyes flicker between the two of them, unreadable.

This isn’t just about trusting what she knows to be true about Kara’s feelings, Lena now just needs to have faith in herself.

But there is at least a little room for a moment of panic.

She holds up the bottle uneasily. “I brought champagne?”

Kara’s jaw sets off to one side, she only stares down at the bottle, and the flat, loose line of her mouth is more accepting of a welcome than Lena had been expecting.

“Don’t let Lucy see that.”

But Sam spins back towards her. “When did you even _ get_ that?”

Lena ignores the question and points to Sam as she addresses Kara. “She’s here to see Alex.”

“I’m sorry, I’m what?”

“Really?” Kara’s eyebrows rise, looking for a moment as if she’s about to take a note out of Lucy’s book and close the door, to leave the two of them alone to work this out, but Lena presses, firm. 

“Yes.”

“She doesn’t look like she’s here to see Alex.”

“I am actually right here, and no, I’m not.”

Lena bites her lip, eyes focused nowhere but on the steady balance of Kara’s. “Do you trust me?”

“No.”

“Always,” Kara answers as easily as the trickle of water floating down a stream. This seems to answer her own questions, whatever they are, because after a finite, almost unnoticeable nod with a stiff jaw, Kara finally steps to the side, and waves them in.

The room quiets down pretty fast.

Winn is the first to greet them, with an enthusiastic shout as he clambers off the back off the couch with a beer in hand, and he rushes over to envelop them both in a wind-knocking hug. He rambles excitedly about how they’re both his two favorite people from SI, how he can’t believe his “kickass boss” and “Lena Fucking Luthor” are back for another Danvers New Year’s bash.

Lena makes a point to entertain him, listen to his long-winded talking and keep up with the quickly changing topics, forcing herself to be present in the four conversations they seem to cover in just two minutes.

When Lena finally looks up and away from Winn’s face, Alex is staring head-on at Sam, who struggles to meet her gaze, particularly so when the first hints of a blush creep around the front of her cheeks.

Lena nudges her arm. “You should start with ‘hi.’”

“Fuck you,” Sam mutters, not looking to her. “I’m not even wearing any foundation right now. Fuck, god fucking dammit Lena, what the fuck do I even say to her? This is like, weird, and kind of invasive, and it’s been over a year for fuck’s sake.”

Lena nods with a faint smirk. “Sure, it has. But it doesn’t mean it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?” Sam asks, and though it’s said with heavy sarcasm, Lena answers anyway. 

“Whatever you want. But this time I won’t get involved. Promise.”

Sam shoots her a skeptical look, and Lena adjusts.

“Okay, aside from _ tonight _, I promise not to interfere. But, you know.” Lena shrugs, nodding in the other Danvers sister’s direction. “You needed a push.”

“I need a push?” Sam laughs. “Don’t compare me to your stubborn ass, that’s your thing.”

Fiddling with the gold foil of the champagne bottle, Lena glances around, finding Kara standing with Kelly beside the kitchen island, the former watching Lena with a small crinkle between her eyes. But when she notices Lena looking at her, it dissipates — a little, at least, and Kara offers something that Lena could almost call a smile.

Lena sends back a small, stupid wave.

“Normally, yes.” Lena bears a small smile of her own. “But I think I might be good on my own, this time.”

“I really don’t like the idea of us both having some intense, introspective moment at the same time in the same apartment with two sisters.”

“Tough luck.” Lena turns back to her friend, pats her on the back encouragingly. “Good luck.”

Kelly and Kara’s conversation slowly fades out as Lena approaches. Unlike Kara and Alex’s stony apprehension, Kelly gives Lena a warm smile and a fond greeting, one that Lena returns sincerely.

But Kelly makes no move to leave, and Lena swallows as she looks to Kara. “Can we… can we talk?”

This seems to only make Kelly’s smile grow bigger, and she looks sideways at Kara, her eyes flaring with amusement. When Kara, stiff-jawed and distant, finally nods, Kelly gives a confident nod of her own before bowing out.

But first—

“I think I’ll just take this off your hands,” Kelly whispers with a wink, plucking the bottle from Lena’s hands before quickly scampering back off towards the living room, and Lena and Kara share a startled laugh once they’re left alone.

Although Lena should have known that just because she has faith in herself, it doesn’t mean she’s not still terrified to death. And so, it _ does _ come as somewhat of a surprise when Lena finds herself only staring helplessly at Kara, like the same magical words Lillian had talked about will come to her now.

Miraculously, and not like Lena deserves it at all, Kara breaks the silence.

“Do you want a change of clothes?” Kara’s eyes trail down to Lena’s ensemble, and only now does Lena realize she’s shivering.

“Oh, right.” Lena laughs nervously. “I don’t know why I thought you all might still be on the roof, like it isn’t also a torrential downpour up there.”

With a brief look around the apartment, Kara chuckles faintly as Lena mentally kicks herself for her awkward inarticulacy, and she nods off to the side towards her room. “Okay, come on. We can talk in there.”

It’s unnervingly a simple ordeal, how Kara shuffles through one of her drawers and hands Lena a pale blue t-shirt with a white food service logo printed across the breast, along with a pair of jeans that Lena’s borrowed in the past, like she remembers this is the one that always fit her best. There’s a familiar rhythm with how Kara wordlessly turns her back and faces the window while Lena changes into the dry clothes, no need to duck out like they’re fresh blushing teenagers, and Lena finds herself strangely thankful for how she stays.

“Okay.” Lena drapes her wet clothes along the back of Kara’s desk chair as Kara turns around. 

Hands hanging loosely in the front pocket of her jeans, soft hair tucked behind her ears, Kara just so comfortably _ belongs _ here, in this scrape of life, at this flicker of time. The frame of rain-splattered night out the window behind her, the warm glow of her eyes, it’s breathtaking, and Lena’s not sure why, but she can’t imagine how Kara could ever exist without taking her breath away. 

Though, before Kara can say anything in return, a flutter of orange on the bed catches her eye, and Kara follows her line of sight.

“Oh, don’t worry about him, PB can keep a secret,” the blonde says dismissively, waving Lena’s attention off Pork Belly like Lena’s greatest worry is on whether or not the sleepy old cat will eavesdrop on Lena’s imminent word-vomit.

“Right.”

The nervousness from before returns, and Lena takes a seat at the foot of the bed (away from the cat) and looks down to her knitted hands. When Kara doesn’t follow, just continues to linger by the window, Lena looks up again.

“I found my replacement,” Lena blurts out. 

This is already not going according to plan.

Kara’s face doesn’t so much as twitch. “Good for you. I know you were worried about it.” She nods, almost to herself. “When do you leave?”

Lena licks her lips, cocking her jaw, and she laughs nervously. “Right, um… well, you see… I don’t.”

Kara’s gaze hardens, but she still says nothing.

“I don’t,” Lena says again, more confidently this time, meeting Kara’s eye evenly. “I hired someone to take over Lillian’s duties in Metropolis, and she’s taking over mine. So, I really hope you’ll have me, because I’m staying either way. I’ll be working eighty hour weeks for the next nine years at least, I don’t sleep enough, and you know I drink too much. I’m passive aggressive. I pick fights with you when I know you’re right. I get jealous when I have no right to. I’m petty, stubborn, and I’ll never be the kind of person who can just let go of a grudge without a fight.”

Taking a deep, trembling breath, Lena pushes back the sting in her eyes. 

“But I will always be someone who is in love with you.”

Whatever Kara had been expecting Lena to say, it’s not this, because the careful composure of courtesy she’s held upfront like fine, expensive silver falls away now, her mouth dropped and her eyes splayed wide, a picture-perfect deer in headlights.

“I know I’ve been projecting onto you this sick, miserable persona, telling myself you were broken without me when I was the one who couldn’t so much as hear your name without lashing out. I thought it would just make me feel better about this _ relief _ I felt, having you in my life again. As if I wasn’t doing this just for me, it was for you too. As if I had a duty to work on this and try and move us passed it, like we needed this closure.”

Sucking in a sharp breath, Lena rises to her feet, rubbing her clammy hands on the faded jeans and taking the barest of steps towards Kara, though the blonde remains frozen. “The truth is that I haven’t been ready to forgive you because I’ve been so terrified of forgetting you. It felt like losing you. These last two years, I’ve been running on this premise that I would see you again one day, whether it was at a stupid award ceremony, on the street, or you just miraculously seeking me out. I was always waiting for you to come back, even if I thought I didn’t want it.”

Lena can’t quite tell if the crystallized shock cementing Kara’s expression is swaying one way another, but Lena owes her this much now.

“So, when it came,” Lena says slowly, reflecting on a golden night months ago under chandeliers in an entirely different light. “I think I knew deep down that it would never come again, that once I left this time around, that was it for us. It would be over. And I wasn’t ready to let it go… to let you go. So I kept this ridiculous charade going, because living in this exhausting limbo with you seemed so much better than not having you at all.

“What I mean to say is, I’m staying. I want to stay. Because, what else would I do?” There’s a droll lilt to her tone, as timid as it is gentle as she takes another step closer, echoing a conversation from a dingy bathroom in a dingy bar. “Leave? Why would I ever leave?”

The quiet hangs like mid-winter starlights. 

“Am I dreaming? This is a dream, right?” Kara says suddenly, in a voice that should be too loud, but to Lena, it just sounds like _ life _.

Lena starts with a laugh, steps further. “Do you want it to be?”

“I don’t know.” Kara’s mouth pinches small in thought. “Dreams are safer, aren’t they?”

It’s said so innocently, yet it pries into Lena’s chest like a blade, and she stops in her path, standing listlessly in the middle of Kara’s room with only the chatter and festivities of the party outside to blanket them.

“I read it,” Lena says in lieu of an answer. “The article.”

“Oh… What did you, uh, what’d you think?”

Lena doesn’t know where the burn of her eyes stems from, but this time she makes no effort to squash it down as her vision blurs. “It was interesting, to say the least. I’ve never had a stalker before.”

Kara’s cheeks flush comically fast, but her surprise surpasses it. “Really?”

“Is that truly your most pressing question?”

“It’s… a point of concern, sort of, yeah.” Kara shakes her head and rubs her eyes, confused. “But um, okay, right, so like, what are you saying? Exactly? Can you spell this all out for me like I’m five?”

“Is that not what I’ve already been doing?”

“I mean, this is all kind of—”

“I love you.”

Kara’s jaw clamps shut like it’s wired on a bolt, and the muscle along it throbs with tension.

“I still love you,” Lena amends. “Maybe I stopped, maybe I didn’t, maybe I saw your face at that gala and I just fell in love with you all over again. I don’t know. I don’t know if I can trust you again, if you should trust me, if we’re even the best thing for each other anymore. I don’t know if I’m going against every lesson of logic I’ve ever learned just to stay in National City.”

“You don’t seem to know a lot,” Kara says, but it’s weak.

“I know I want to do it all anyway.” 

Another step, just a few feet apart.

“I know you can live without me, and I can probably live without you.” Lena swallows, the blur of her vision clearing momentarily as a tear spills down her cheek. “But I know that I just don’t want to.”

Unlike Lena, Kara’s eyes remain dry, and her gaze flickers over her with the utmost caution. It’s not quite skeptical, she doesn’t look at Lena with distrust, just plain and simple disbelief. Lena never thought this would be easy, of course not, but it only now starts to register just how many layers of preservation she will have to work through to make Kara believe her. Lena herself is the one with an aromored fucking fortress around her, one that took two years for Kara to slip into. And she did so with such care, such a dandelion touch, of course Lena would stand up for this fight.

“Isn’t this how it usually goes?”

Kara frowns. “How what goes?”

“Those movies you watch.” Lena lets out a wet laugh. “They usually get the girl in the end, don’t they?”

But Kara still doesn’t smile. “I don’t want this to be the end.”

“I know.” A step.

Kara’s eyes flicker down ever so briefly. “We can’t just go back to being the Kara and Lena we were before, like none of this ever happened, we can’t just—”

“I know.” Lena’s close enough now to smell that waft of vanilla and honey, this new shampoo that kicked her in the gut weeks ago, it now only smells like tomorrow. “I don’t want to go back.”

“Then what—”

“I want to go forward.” Without refraining, Lena lets her own gaze drop to Kara’s mouth, to the soft, pink curve of her lips and how instinctually Kara licks them. “With you,” she adds like an afterthought. “I want to move forward with you.”

“Have you been drinking?” 

Kara’s whisper is so quiet, yet Lena feels the breathy current of her words against her own mouth, and she laughs, because somehow this is far more intimate than anywhere else they’ve ever been. Breathing the same air like their lungs are connected, so certain that she can hear Kara’s heart through her chest, can feel the warmth radiating from her skin.

“Not at all. You?”

“A little.”

Lena raises a brow. “How much is a little?”

“I thought we moved passed the whole criticizing-my-drinking-habits thing.”

“We did.” Lena licks her own lips, and smiles when she notices Kara looking down again. “I just want to make sure I’m not… pressuring you, into anything.”

Kara’s throat bobs with a swallow. “I feel pressured.”

“Do you?”

“You’re standing, like, really close.”

“Would you like me to move?”

Their eyes lift to each other at the same time, hold as Kara’s head shakes ever so slightly. “What would you, um, be pressuring me into, exactly?”

When Lena’s hand raises between them, just a soft touch running along the collar of Kara’s hoodie, faint enough that Kara probably can’t even feel it, the blonde shifts her weight and clears her throat, but her stance is just as loose and welcoming as ever.

“Well.” Lena smooths out the collar, corner of her mouth perking. “If you weren’t drunk, I would probably be asking you what you’re thinking right now.”

“Nothing.”

Lena raises her eyebrow again.

“No, seriously, there’s absolutely zero things running through my brain right now.” Kara’s face knits cutely, her eyes re-glue themselves to Lena’s mouth. “Sorry, maybe you should, um, I just need to—”

She doesn’t need to be told twice. 

“I’m sorry.” Even as Lena steps away, Kara herself paces away from the window, rubbing her eyes as if she’s just woken up. “I want to — I want to just _ take _ this at face value, but I don’t understand what’s _ changed _ for you. I don’t get why you’re here now, why a month ago you could barely look me in the eye, and now… now, what?”

Backing up to give Kara the space she craves, to sit at the edge of her own bed, Lena knits her fingers together again restlessly. “I know. I know this feels like maybe it’s coming entirely out of nowhere, and I understand your reservations about… this.”

“I don’t have _ reservations _ ,” Kara says exhaustedly, her hair fluttering with the force of her words. “I’ve never had a single reservation for how I feel about you, I’ve always known it was you. But I don’t want you to wake up a month from now and decide that staying was a mistake, that I’m just holding you back, that I’ve hurt you too much for you to ever live your life how you want to. I’m not worried about me, I’m scared this isn’t what _ you _ want.”

“What I want is to live a life with you.”

“But—”

Lena sinks to the floor at Kara’s feet, heart thundering out of her chest, though she still resists the rattling urge to touch her. “I’m scared, too. You have every right to doubt me. I’m a mess, I make your life a living hell. I’m not about to lie and tell you I just fixed myself overnight, that this will be easy, I know we still have so much to work on. I’m not saying this is the end. All I can tell you is I want to try. To try this again, to be good enough for you.”

Kara’s mouth crumples once more, and she’s the one to reach out. A hand caresses along Lena’s cheek, and even the cold fingers leave an ethereal trail of heat across her skin. 

“You were always enough for me.” The stroke of her thumb across Lena’s cheekbone. “I just wanted you to feel like you’re enough for you. You’re worth the world, Lena. If I could prove that to anyone, it would always be you.”

Looking up at Kara with still an imploring gaze, Lena swallows back the choke in her throat. “So, is that a yes?”

Kara laughs wetly, shaking her head. But before she’s even answered, she’s pushing off the bed and dropping to her knees on the floor in front of Lena, both hands lifting to cradle her face with a delicate prize of relief.

“I’m still not sure what the question is, but yes.” Kara’s voice twinges, and her hands are somehow both firm and uncertain as they press back into Lena’s hair. “I just— If this means, can I—?”

Eyes burning once more, Lena can only nod, this quick, jerky thing, but rather than the kiss that Lena expects, Kara just tugs Lena into her arms with the kind of haste when you worry a dream only lasts for so long, clutching Lena close. She winds her arms tightly around Lena’s shoulders, burying her face into her still-damp hair, and something so simple as an embrace is exactly the thing to shove aside any restraints Lena had left. Her face tucked into the warmth of Kara’s neck, the safe press of their fronts together, the tears rush out like the break of light over a horizon.

“I didn’t want you to go,” Kara mumbles in a rush into Lena’s hair, squeezing tighter. “I really, really didn’t want you to go.”

Lena all but laughs through her relieved tears. “You can thank Lillian for that.”

“But, I mean, how did you even—?” Kara pulls away just as quickly as she’d pulled her in, her hand pressing into the side of Lena’s face, clearing her hair away. “How the hell did you get her to let you do this?”

Sniffling, Lena chokes out another laugh. “It was her idea, believe it or not.”

Kara’s face falls into a devastating frown. “Now I know you’ve been drinking.”

“I haven’t.”

“There’s no way _ Lillian Luthor _ encouraged you to stay for— for—”

“For you?”

“For _ you.” _

Lena pushes impossibly closer, this time less reserved as she splays her hands over Kara’s chest, tucking her fingers under the top of the sweater. “You have my mother’s seal of endorsement, yes. If it weren’t for her, it might have taken me a little longer to ‘get my head out of my ass,’ as Gayle put it.”

“You talked to Gayle about me?” Kara asks with a smile, though it’s still laced with the trembling disbelief, her own eyes damp. “Really unexpected support system you’ve got going for you.”

“Oh, you have no idea.”

Kara’s brow scrunches cutely. “So, like, does this mean you’ll actually admit I’m your friend now?”

This sparks an abrupt clap of laughter from Lena, and she tips her head forward until it falls against Kara’s collarbone. “I still can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”

“What?”

“Kara,” Lena laughs, snaking a hand up against the side of Kara’s neck. “Darling, I have no interest in being friends.”

A muscle flexes underneath Lena’s touch, and she smiles.

“We were never really just friends, were we?” Lena drags her fingers in longer, slower strokes over her skin. “But this is exactly why I wanted to clarify how much you’ve had to drink.”

“Sorry, uh, what’s why?”

“I’m going to kiss you now.”

Kara just about chokes on her own saliva, and perhaps Lena’s earlier assessment that they have more dignity than blushing teenagers was too preemptive, because a blush quickly crawls back up Kara’s face, and she nods unsteadily.

“Oh, uh, okay.”

Maybe Lena isn’t so slick herself, a nervous edge slips into her tone. “Is that alright? Do you… want me to?” 

“I don’t know, do you want to?”

Lena drops her head back again with a sigh. “I pictured this being much more romantic.”

“You’re wearing my old Cinnabon shirt, I can hear Lucy arguing with Kelly about the rules of baseball-pong, and your best friend is seducing my sister somewhere in this apartment. I don’t know why you thought this would be romantic.”

Lena gives an indignant scoff. “She is not _ seducing _ her. She’s supposed to just… well, she’s um…”

“Seducing.”

“Wooing.”

Lifting her head back up, Lena catches the quirk of a smile on Kara’s mouth, the fond glitter of her eyes as the blonde brushes her hair once more from her face. 

“What?” 

“It’s okay,” Kara murmurs, lips lifting into a smirk. “I still think this is pretty romantic.”

Now, almost petulant, Lena rolls her eyes. “Okay, whatever.”

“No, really, it is.”

“I didn’t ask your opinion.”

“Honestly, all those movies have got nothing on you. You ever think about going into dramatic writing?”

“_ Kara.” _ Lena smacks her in the chest heatedly, to which Kara only tosses her head back with a joyously unweighted laugh. “I will absolutely take it all back.”

“No, you won’t.” Kara’s arms glide down Lena’s back, interlocking behind her hips, an addictively rich feeling of security. “‘Cause you love me.”

“I swear to god—”

“And I love you, too. Obviously.”

The playful smile immediately falls from Lena’s face as the tic of her excited heart instead pounds with a firmer, more earnest momentum.

“You do?”

“Mhm, yeah. That’s about all I’m thinking about right now.”

Lena bites her lip. “Just… just that?”

“Yep.”

“I really was expecting you to be thinking a little bit more.”

Kara’s arms wind tighter, scooping Lena impossibly closer. “Like what?”

A shaky inhale. “You know, maybe just, anything more about anything else I said.”

“You did say a lot, yeah.”

“Yes. The loving-you part was a very small component.”

“And yet it’s really the only thing I’m focusing on.”

“We need to talk about this.”

“Right, yeah,” Kara hums. “Just, maybe later?”

“This was supposed to be a conversation, not a monologue.”

“But you’re so cute when you give speeches.”

“Kara?”

A slow grin spreads across Kara’s mouth, and she tilts her head, face aglow with such unbounded adoration that Lena wonders why she ever waited so long.

“Yeah?”

“Please kiss me.”

“Sure, I’m getting there. But Lena?”

Lena raises an impatient brow, and Kara’s grin threads wider.

“If life with you makes mine a living hell, then I know heaven doesn’t exist.”

Her words trigger a swell of overwhelming appreciation in her chest, but— Lena frowns. “I think that might have sounded better in your head.”

Kara mirrors her frown, her eye dropping to somewhere just behind Lena’s shoulder, her mouth moving wordlessly as she backtracks over what she’s said, and Lena groans once more.

“Okay, what about—”

Lena cuts her off.

It’s not some grand, momentous centering of the cosmos, not a galactic big-bang that Lena’s entire life has been leading up to. It’s not fireworks or the white-hot fusion of energy finally finding its release, not the plates of the earth splitting apart for some natural calamity.

It’s just a quiet, almost unnoticeable catch of Kara’s breath in her throat as Lena pushes up onto her toes. It’s a very universally human swoop of her stomach as chapstick-lips press into hers. It’s a blanket of Kara’s barely illuminated room that envelops them, not like the rest of life outside doesn’t exist, but like this is where Lena finally feels connected with the world, confident in her own existence.

It’s not anything particularly novel or groundbreaking.

It’s just the two of them, just Lena’s mouth gasping open and the rush of a hot exhale as she climbs further into Kara’s arms, just Kara’s hammering chest and firm hands. It’s just Lena’s fingers digging into the back of Kara’s hair, just Kara’s stuttering breath, just the timely dawn of a different tomorrow.

It’s just a kiss, one well worth the wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so these are some weird times we're living in
> 
> we're all dealing with struggles of our own, i know i have a lot of challenges of my own right now, and i just wanted to say this fic has really been such a fun and gratifying project, and you guys are a huge testament to what a rock it's been for me. thank you, all of you, for all your amazing comments, kudos', reactions, talking to me on twitter, etc etc, it means the world to me. i hope you're all staying safe, clean, and finding ways to relax where you can, and i hope this chapter maybe helped shine just a little light somewhere for you, because this entire experience has been one for me
> 
> it's not over, two more chapters is my new estimate, but i just wanted to say this now
> 
> take care of yourselves and each other xx
> 
> FURTHER, the two charities/nonprofits mentioned in kara's article are real if you're able to share a little magic of your own, i have the links to their websites listed here:
> 
> Community United Against Violence: supports the healing of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer people that have experienced violence and abuse by other people and /or institutions.
> 
> ArtLifting: Connect Socially Conscious Companies With Talented Artists Impacted By Homelessness Or Disabilities
> 
> finally, if you'd like to make any donations related to everything that's going on now, [here's an article](https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/guidance/disaster-relief/how-to-help-novel-coronavirus.html) listing some ways you can help there


	23. how can i stand here with you and not be moved by you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ty lydia + wendy for beating out my run-on sentences and teaching me the right usage of who's vs. whose. it's a tough grind out here folks

“Kara.”

“Mm?”

“We should, um—”

“What?”

“Th-the, um, midnight, it’s — we’re going to miss the— the—” 

Kara tears her mouth away from Lena’s neck, her face flushed and lips a delicious, swollen red that catches Lena’s eye like vibrant jewels. 

“The fireworks?” she asks breathlessly, brow scrunched.

Lena can only nod, eyes still fixated on Kara’s wet mouth, heat swelling low in her gut.

“Right, okay, sure.” Kara mimics her nod, her throat bobbing with a swallow as she moves away from the desk, the same desk she’s had Lena pinned on top of for the better part of the last half hour, her grasp strong and hands unrelenting.

Lena’s heart nearly splits in two for how jaw-clenchingly _ cute _ Kara looks now, from the understanding pout of her bottom lip to the bleary way she seems to still be processing the rush of cool air that rushes between them now.

Fuck it. There are fireworks every goddamn year.

Maybe later Lena will be so cheesy as to think about how the fireworks right here, between them, are far more captivating, anyway. 

Lena quickly rushes off the desk and kisses her again, knocking their teeth together in the process. She would have toppled Kara to the floor if the bed had been anywhere else, just about leaping into the blonde’s arms and crashing them both backwards onto the duvet.

Kara gives this dynamite laugh beneath her, brilliant and melodic to Lena’s ears as she drinks in Kara’s breath, inhaling her kiss. She’s all needy, desperate and wandering hands over tight, firm skin. The only sounds she’s capable of making are breathy sighs at the back of her throat like either one of them might disappear at any second, but as if that’s exactly what makes up the thrill. The understanding that everything is temporary, nothing is promised, no tomorrow is given. There’s only today, so long as it’s here.

Kara’s hands find a home on Lena’s waist, her fingers pressing hard under the pale blue shirt as she kisses greedily, causing Lena’s hips to cant downwards and grind into Kara’s with a harder force than just gravity. 

This kickstarts a few things.

Kara’s hands clench impossibly, _ deliciously _ harder, and Lena exhales a sinful moan into Kara’s mouth, the heat of their intermingling breaths alone enough to make them both dizzy. 

Kara’s own hips jerk up against Lena’s, a reflex like tapping her knee. Lena loses her balance at the harsh pulse of desire, the feeling that comes with how the bare skin of Kara’s lower abdomen, now exposed as her sweater has ridden up nearly to her ribcage, now presses against Lena’s. Something so ridiculously juvenile and PG has Lena stuttering with lust, and when her balance slips, falling onto her elbows, her legs shift, and before she can even actively think about the mechanics of their position, a shock of hot pleasure spreads up and through her pelvis like melted wax pouring over her front side.

Kara’s thigh is pressed between her legs, still and firm in a way that makes Lena conscious only of how wickedly muscular and lean Kara is. In the faraway back of her mind, Lena wonders why she would have ever chosen anyone else when Kara’s body is sculpted so heavenly as this.

The realization that her own thigh is also pressed between Kara’s comes later, a stunted afterthought. With the way Kara suddenly freezes beneath her, Lena thinks they both realize it at the same time, not so much the move itself, but the accidental, effortless way they’ve slipped together.

Lena isn’t sure whose pounding heart it is that she can feel so viscerally _ everywhere, _ the thrum against her fingertips, the beating race of blood between the flesh of their lips — it could be either of them for all she knows. But she pulls away, balancing once more on her palms, and she hovers above Kara uncertainly, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Are you okay?” Kara whispers, and at the wide-eyed panic in her eyes, Lena almost laughs out of pity.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

Kara’s mouth pinches small, and though her eyes never waver from Lena’s, she can still see the unspoken conflict. 

“I can—” Lena shifts again when Kara doesn’t answer, already moving to pry herself off of her, but Kara pulls Lena back just as quickly.

“No, no,” she murmurs. “Stay.”

Lena can’t help but smile. “Okay.”

“I just…” 

“Slower?”

Again, rather than answer, Kara’s hands quickly find her own face, and she hides herself in embarrassment, only a groan coming through. “God, I’m sorry, I feel so dumb, I don’t know why I’m even—”

“Hey, hey.” Lena struggles to support herself on just one arm as the other reaches up to pry Kara’s fingers away from her face. “What are you apologizing for?”

Kara’s blue eyes wobble with nerves as she shrugs, tucking back into the bed like a young girl still trying to hide. “I don’t know, for not… Like, I want to, I do, but I—”

“Kara, I really do love you, but your sister and friends are all outside this room right now, and you don’t even have a door. I did not come here to sleep with you.” Lena smiles, more tender as she runs her fingertips slowly along Kara’s cheek. “And even if I did, you have nothing to apologize for.”

Kara still looks like she wants to sink through the mattress into the floor. 

Withdrawing her leg ever so slightly, Lena leans down, catching Kara’s mouth once more, slowly. Her nose nudges against the blonde’s as their lips part, gentle as lilacs, and Lena kisses Kara with the unhurried delicacy of cradling such a flower. The kind of gentleness Kara used to touch her with, a tender worship Lena was terrifyingly certain no one else could ever give her, the only way she’s ever wanted to be kissed.

When she pulls back, Kara seems to have relaxed again, her eyes closed and an almost dreamy smile pulling her mouth sideways.

Lena drops one last peck on her pink lips. “You’re okay. Let’s go watch the fireworks.”

Kara just gives a comically exaggerated groan as Lena struggles to tug her to her feet, purposefully letting her body fall limp. To which Lena just about abandons Kara half-on half-off the bed, grumbling under her breath.

“Wait, wait.” Kara disentangles her ankle from the tousled duvet of her bed, hopping to her feet. “Where are you going?”

Lena frowns, nods to the curtain where the noise of the party emanates from. “Out there?”

Kara makes it to Lena’s side quickly, looping her arms around her waist and pulling their fronts snugly together. “We can watch from my window here. It’s the same view.”

Lena rolls her eyes. “You’re being greedy.”

“How am I being greedy? There’s too many lights on in the living room, we’d see better in here.”

“Okay, so we’ll turn them off. Or, better yet, we can invite everyone in here.” 

“They’re fine out there.”

Lena makes no effort to hide her cheeky smile, with only a distant wonder if Kara’s face might indefinitely freeze into the drawn-out pout of her jutted lip. “Why, Ms. Danvers, are you trying to keep me all to yourself?”

“Yes.”

With another laugh at her frankness, Lena threads their fingers together and kisses her again, if only because of the euphoric glee over how she _ can. _ “Come on, really. I feel like I always end up keeping you away from them.”

“I don’t care, I’ll endorse it.”

“Well, I won’t.” Lena gives one last tug with a finality that must encourage Kara to not keep fighting her on this, because she acquiesces at last. She lets Lena lead them both out of the room, but not without a dramatic groan and her head hanging back like a child dragging their feet.

Lena would be lying if she said that she didn’t expect something to be different now. At least as far as things go with Kara’s friends, this family that Kara’s found in the most unassuming of places, one that has stuck together even as their lives have all diverged. Maybe Lucy would point out far too loudly that Lena has her pinky looped through Kara’s, or Winn’s eyes would bug out at the way Kara’s hand finds Lena’s lower back and rests like it belongs there, drawing everyone else’s attention to the action. Maybe Alex would finally give Lena the shovel talk she forgot to the first time around, with everyone here to bear witness.

But no one bats an eye. 

Well, for the most part.

Kelly still gives Lena the same understanding smile and warm half-armed hug that she did two years ago when they met. James still shakes her hand either like they’re about to conduct a business meeting or like he’s trying to prove how firm of a grip he has. Winn’s excitement over seeing her has neither grown nor dampened. Nia’s eyes still crinkle with kindness like they’re far closer friends who share some sort of secret together, and Lena imagines that she might know more than either Lena or Kara have ever given her credit for. Even Brainy breaks out of his usual reserve to join Winn in their three-way geek session over the new technology SI just announced for their L-Corp lineup a few days ago. 

Lucy is the only one to look at Lena like she still can’t quite decide what to think, like she’s still half-certain that slamming the door on Lena’s face was a good idea, but she’s somehow relieved that Lena made it inside all the same.

The only one besides Alex, of course. 

At least there’s some small amount of consolation in how her and Sam do appear to be talking. Well, Sam is. Lena can’t make much of anything out from their expressions or their low, intimate tones. They’re lingering in the kitchen, slightly off to the side from everyone for privacy, but exposed enough to go unnoticed, as if hiding in plain sight. The only indication that things are going well, aside from the fact they’re talking at all, is how close they stand. Every so often between words, Sam will duck forward and steal sips from the straw of Alex’s Capri-Sun without the Danvers sister so much as batting an eye. The familiar ease of how they stand together, this fluid coexistence without serious expressions or grand gestures, it reminds Lena of that one brunch her and Kara shared months ago when this all started. That overpriced restaurant, the mindless exchange of one mimosa glass, going over a silly list of rules that are enough to make Lena flush with embarrassment now. 

She wonders how she didn’t see it before. Not with her and Kara, but with Sam and Alex.

That one late evening so long ago, Lena had let herself into Sam’s house like she had done dozens of times before, only to find Alex leaned onto her elbow on Sam’s couch. Such a serene smile they shared together, one Lena had never seen on either of their faces before.

How Lena had broken it apart like a hurricane sucking up whatever oasis laid in its path.

Maybe she did see it then, maybe that was exactly what terrified her.

“I never asked you about this,” Lena says suddenly, spinning around in Kara’s arms. She’s momentarily distracted by their proximity, by how she can smell the wine that lingers on Kara’s breath, the warmth in her smile.

“Asked about what?”

“Um.” Lena licks her lips and shakes her head. “Your sister and Sam. We never really had the chance to talk about that, before. Or this time. I feel like I should have asked how you felt about it.”

Kara’s eyebrows raise with both confusion and surprise. “Oh, like… that? Sure, I guess. I’ve never been as invested in her love life as she is in mine, honestly, but I mean, yeah. I like Sam, and Alex seemed to like being around her enough. Never really saw them together enough to make an opinion, but I did use to wonder why they stopped seeing each other in the first place.”

With a faint nod, Lena grimaces. “Right, about that.” At the downcast fall of Kara’s expression, one Lena half-anticipated, she’s quick to wrap her hand around Kara’s, the one that hangs on her hip. “Hey, wherever your mind is about to go, don’t. This one is on me.”

“You can’t blame yourself for everything.”

“And neither can you.” 

“I’m not, actually,” Kara laughs gently, stroking her thumb along the pulse of Lena’s wrist, striking a distracting shiver down her spine. Kara’s eyes soften. “But I do hate to think about how long you’ll beat yourself up for every single thing. Because, believe me, I know how easy of a rabbit hole that is to fall into.”

“I know I can’t change the way I handled things before, I won’t try to. My point is just that, now, I’d rather overcompensate than under.”

“And that’s your compensation?” A slight smile quirks up the corner of her mouth, and Lena finds herself mirroring the amusement. “Playing cupid for my sister?”

“Wait until I tell you who Gayle’s with right now.”

Kara tilts her head with a curious glint in her eye, one that borders on awe, and it makes Lena roll her eyes as much as it makes her want to kiss that stupid look away. 

“What?”

But Kara redirects. “What makes you think they would be so good together? Sam and Alex, I mean.” She doesn’t ask it like a challenge, like she doubts Lena, just more out of intrigue. “You just never had the chance to get to know her super well.”

Lena smiles, her gaze lifting from Kara’s pink lips to land steadily on her eyes. “No, but if she’s anything like Sam, then I imagine she doesn’t take an interest in people very easily.”

“Right, ‘cause you’re such a wise romantic, are you? Know all about compatibility?”

“Of course I am. I’m something of an expert on that. I thought someone would’ve told you by now.”

“No, actually. Haven’t seen any of these credentials.”

“Well, I don’t know about you,” Lena says wryly, tapping her finger against Kara’s knuckles. “But being here with you now feels an awful lot like a show of my expertise, doesn’t it?”

The gentle pull of Kara’s holiday smile alone is enough to make Lena think that, despite all the back and forth of blame and grief they’ve endured over the last few months, the last two _ years _, it all was exactly what brought them here today. It would all be worth doing again if it always ended here, with Kara, cheeks pink and eyes like syrup, looking at Lena with the candy-coated trust that all the bitterness in the world could never outweigh a sweet story like theirs.

xx

They don’t sleep together. 

Not like that, at least.

It’s not really something they talk about explicitly, not anything more than the brief side-step of a conversation they already had at the foot of Kara’s bed earlier in the night. 

They’re not the first to leave, but also not the last. By the time the party winds down, a little after five in the morning, it’s only Nia, Kelly, Sam, and Alex that remain, the boys having already surrendered and gone home. Lucy could be counted, but she was face-down and fast asleep on Kara’s couch by three, and nothing short of a four-alarm fire could wake her now. So with the party already dwindled, Lena notices the heavy droop of Kara’s eyelids, the flutter of her eyelashes, and soon after, the two of them bid the rest goodnight.

No one says anything when Lena follows Kara to her room.

“I’ll just, um.” Lena points over her shoulder to the entrance they’ve just walked through as Kara collapses onto the bed stomach-down and spread-eagled. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“If you leave me now, I’m throwing a tantrum,” Kara mumbles loudly, muffled by the pillows.

“You’re a little old for that, don’t you think?”

Kara rolls over, scrubbing her bleary eyes. “Please just come to bed with me.”

“And what do I get out of it?”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t just call me _ old. _ You know I only have two years on you, right?”

She feels filthy from the city rain that’s dried on her skin, something that also left her hair feeling like the texture of old hay, and Lena’s not sure that Kara so much as owns makeup remover. Not to mention her room has always been far too cold for her liking. 

But of course she slips in beside her, of course there’s nowhere else she’d rather be.

“At least I don’t have any grey hairs yet,” Lena says wryly, as if her chest isn’t overflowing with an adoration far too grand for this moment.

With a surge of energy neither of them thought she had left in her, Kara swiftly winds her arms around Lena’s midsection and hauls her over the bed, manhandling her into the mountain of pillows and ripping a song of laughter from Lena’s throat, one that is far too loud for this hour, but more than enough for this lifetime.

xx

She sneaks out of bed before Kara wakes.

Her feet twist out from under Kara’s ankles and shimmy out of the covers, dipping to the floor. Tendrils of sunlight stream from the windows and bathe her calves in the honey-like warmth, a contrast against the cold hardwood beneath her soles. She’s careful not to wake the sleeping blonde, but if the snores she’s grumbling face-down into her pillow are any indication, Lena thinks Kara won’t be waking up very easily for a while. 

Having slept only in the Cinnabon shirt and her underwear, Lena scoops the same sweater Kara was wearing last night off the floor and tugs it over her head. It smells more like Kara than the shirt does, and walking around this frigid apartment with the following aroma of Kara feels like a dreamier bliss than sleep could ever bring.

She’s just untucking her hair from the collar of the sweater when she emerges from Kara’s room, sweeping it off to one side and humming the early chords of a Fleetwood Mac song, when another door opens.

Hand hovering over the espresso coffee grounds in the cupboard, unmoving, Lena looks out to just past the fridge.

Red hair spiked up to one side and bags like bruises under her eyes, Alex still masters the glare of a Greek god.

Lena has put herself through far too much just to wind up as someone who cowers in the face of challenge, not now. But she also knows a line when she sees one.

“Hi.” She shuts the cupboard, holds up the bag of _ Noonan's _grounds. “I was going to make Kara a latte. Would you like one?”

Alex remains still. “She takes her coffee black now.”

Lena raises her eyebrows, hesitating. Does she? When was the last time her and Kara had coffee together? There was that morning Kara brought _ her _ coffee, the morning after an embarrassing karaoke stunt. Lena had re-heated their coffees in mugs for them, once upstairs, but—

It’s a test. Or Alex is just fucking with her for the fun of it.

“No, she doesn’t.” 

Alex purses her lips, holding Lena’s eye for a few beats longer before she rolls her eyes and trudges to the island bar stools. “Whatever. Yeah, I’ll take two.”

“Two?”

“You know, other people do live here.”

Lena frowns, but Alex is already shooting a pointed look at Lena’s bare legs, the hem of the sweater that does nothing to even pretend like it’s replacing pants.

“Oh, well, I just—”

“And it’s pretty rude to just help yourself to someone else’s kitchen like it’s yours.” 

Lena’s entirely aware that it wouldn’t be appropriate to remind Alex that she’s the one who bought the espresso machine, because that’s distastefully petty, yet she can already feel the childish retort forming. 

She’s cut off by another door opening again, and Lena’s never been more thankful to see Sam in her entire life.

Sam, who pads out from the hallway leading to Alex’s room in only a wrinkled maroon button-down that hangs open over her bare cleavage, just barely hiding what lies beneath, and a pair of black panties printed with, _ if you’re reading this, eat me. _

Lena refrains from asking why she chose that pair of underwear for what was originally supposed to be a ladies’ night in with her daughter.

“Morning,” the brunette greets cheerfully, first winding around the island to drop an open-mouthed kiss on Alex’s mouth. Alex sputters in response, cheeks heating up to match her hair, all dark bravado gone. While Lena does nothing to hide her snort of laughter, Sam rounds back around and presses a kiss to her cheek. “And good morning to you, too.”

“It is a good morning, isn’t it?” Lena asks with a wry smile.

Humming in agreement under her breath much like Lena had been just a few moments ago, Sam tugs open the fridge door and snags a pint of orange juice, untwisting the cap and shamelessly pulling a swig straight from the carton.

Now it’s Lena’s turn to shoot Alex a pointed look, waiting to see if she has the same scolding pitch for her as well.

When nothing arises and Alex just clears her throat, looking away, Lena chuckles. “Pass me the milk, will you Sam?”

Alex clears her throat again. “I, uh, I asked her to make you a latte.”

Lena’s already smiling knowingly by the time the plastic is being pressed into her hands, because Sam answers, “Oh, I stopped drinking dairy, actually. I’ll just have whatever you’re having, Lena.”

Alex buries her face in her hands, groaning tiredly.

Once Sam’s wandered off to the shower, with a particularly loud call over her shoulder back to Alex that she’d warm up the water while she waits for her to join her whenever she’s ready, Lena finally sets a finished latte down in front of Alex with a small smile before returning to the machine.

“She changes her coffee order every other week, if it makes you feel better.”

“I used to be on your side, you know.”

The shift in the atmosphere is palpable, but Lena swallows back her discomfort. She presses both buttons on the machine, nudges the small cups beneath the spouts. “I do.”

“I used to think you were the best thing for her.” Alex’s jaw clenches, her nostrils flare for a moment. “So I’m going to do you the benefit of letting you know that the second that changes, the moment I start to have _ any _ doubt about you again, you’re gone. I’ll make sure of it.”

Lena holds Alex’s gaze evenly, honestly, before she slides the second espresso for Sam across the counter, keeping one for herself.

As far as shovel talks go, it’s not particularly creative or malicious. Lena bets that Alex could have gone into excruciating detail for all the ways that she’d make Lena regret hurting her sister. Somehow, this frank, simple warning holds more menace, feels more threatening than anything else — as if Alex knows that losing Kara is the most dangerous of omens, what would scare Lena the most. 

“I’d hope that you would, Alex.” With a smirk, she adds, “Enjoy your shower.”

Once back in Kara’s room, she sets the drinks down on the nightstand and puts herself lightly at the edge of the bed beside the back of Kara’s sleeping form.

She rolls over, turning towards Lena with a sleepy grunt of confusion. “Mm, hi.”

Setting her phone onto the nightstand, Lena drops down to the side of the bed and strokes a hand over Kara’s temple, pushing her hair back from her face. “Hey, you.”

Kara’s own hands are already reaching out from beneath the covers for Lena’s hips, gentle and longing. 

“You’re still here,” she mumbles.

Yes, right. Two years ago — to the day, which is strange to think about — she left before Kara had woken, gone to Sam’s for a morning slice of gossip and some silly heartfelt talks. It’s unnerving how full-circle things have neatly come back around today, with Sam just a few rooms over doing god only knows what with Alex.

Even if there’s another shoe yet to drop today this time around, that’s alright. She knows they can handle it.

“Yes.” Running her thumb along Kara’s chin, Lena smiles. “I’m still here.”

xx

It takes only a week for Lena to find a more permanent residence and have her things shipped over. Lillian takes care of selling her penthouse in Metropolis, and their ensuing argument over FaceTime about which National City neighborhoods Lena’s allowed to live in lasts only a couple minutes before her mother huffs with an eye roll and hangs up, but not after a flippant, _ “Do whatever you like, Lena, I’m getting too old to keep bickering with you like this.” _

Where, before, this would leave a poor taste in Lena’s mouth and probably have a greater impact on the rest of her day than she’d ever care to admit, she now puts her phone down with a smile. They’re not perfect, their relationship never was. Far from it. 

But if they’re even an inch closer to understanding one another, that feels like having more of a mother than she ever dreamed she could.

“I thought you said Lillian let you pick?”

Lena turns around from the balcony windows to watch Kara stroll around the near-empty condo, looking around the bare walls and white-bamboo floors, exploring as much as she can without disturbing the movers coming in and out with boxes and furniture. 

Lena frowns. “I did. I chose this one.”

“Oh. Right, I like it. It’s nice.”

Lena narrows her eyes. “What were you going to say?

“Nothing.”

“One rule.”

Kara’s laugh echoes around the empty apartment like birdsong. “Oh c’mon, I thought we were done with that. Can’t I lie at my own discretion now?”

“Well, we’re not. Speaking of which, I’m still waiting for my Christmas present.”

“I told you I gave it to Kelly. Take it up with her.”

“Why you would give away _ my _ present is beyond me.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t’ve waited so long to come back, then.”

Huffing, Lena turns back to the windows with crossed arms, looking out onto the water. “I didn’t even spend two million on the place,” she points out petulantly, returning to the original conversation. 

Arms thread around her midsection, and a chin nuzzles into her shoulder. “So, I probably don’t want to know how much your place in Metropolis cost, then?”

Lena turns once more, unable to do anything but melt under the blonde’s touch, and drops a quick kiss on her mouth. “You’re a fast learner.”

xx

Of course she considered asking Kara to move in with her. She’s fucking in love, god dammit. Like a Hallmark channel, Disney fairytale, nauseatingly signature-Hollywood _ love. _ She’d be lying if she said she didn’t, at the very least, consider it.

But they’re taking things slow. 

This is still new, despite how long and complicated their history is. They both seem to be on the same page of wanting to do things properly this time around, whatever that means. For now, it just seems to be resemblant of something called _ dating. _ That’s the closest a term Lena can come up with. Again, a department Lena feels not all that familiar with, her life with Siobhan being much too far away and different to use as comparison now.

From what she can tell, so far all it means is that they don’t see each other every day, and they don’t spend every night together either. 

Lena hadn’t been exaggerating about her accelerating work schedule. The week after New Year’s, she and Lillian are both working double-time to solidify their new years’ financial plans, to adjust budgets and push more efforts towards their social media marketing, while still ensuring they stay on track for their launch in February. 

So, no, they don’t see each other much more than a couple or so times a week, for a number of reasons. Whether they’re taking things slow because of Lena’s hectic schedule and how Kara’s hours are nearly a complete mirror-opposite to hers, or whether this is just all a safeguard to hold them true to this promise, Lena doesn’t know.

But the only other thing that “taking it slow” means is… 

Sex.

And if they’re not sleeping together, they’re certainly not going to start picking out paint cards and matching tapestries for a place to live together anytime soon.

They still haven’t talked about it, not really. Not at all.

It’s been over three weeks since New Year’s Day, almost a month, and they still haven’t _ gone _ there, nor acknowledged what happened that night.

Lena wants to say it’s a mutual decision, that they are both on the same page of wanting to wait for some specific checkpoint in their relationship before agreeing it’s time. Which, she supposes it is in a way, but it’s becoming quickly apparent that sex is more something that they both keep nervouslyy dancing around rather than _ choosing _ to put off.

And it’s certainly not for a lack of desire.

One weekend night that Lena manages to be home by midnight, with Kara’s catering shift having finished by one, results in them glueing themselves to one another as soon as Lena opens the door to Kara waiting outside. Lena knocks Kara back into the wall of the hallway behind her before Kara manages to stagger them both back inside, fumbling blindly to close the door as Lena digs her hands in her hair and drags her bottom lip between her teeth. 

They don’t make it beyond the living room, Lena pressed back into the soft cotton of the couch and Kara dragging hot, wet kisses down her chest as she tugs the neck of her shirt down and out of the way. No, there is plenty of desire between them, her head thundering in her chest and her skin alight with dizzying, unadulterated _ want. _

But then.

They only get so far before Lena remembers a lonely year, the number of women she let kiss her neck or touch her thighs like Kara does now, how many made it over the threshold of her penthouse, how many times Lena panicked and froze at the concept of laying herself bare again for someone, something she never used to think twice about.

It’s like the thought alone of being grateful that that panic no longer exists is enough to spring it back to life now.

“Wait,” Lena gasps, her chest thudding for a completely different reason now. “Wait, I’m sorry, can we just—”

Kara’s already let go of her shirt, pulling her mouth from Lena’s skin and hovering over her face with bated worry before Lena’s even finished her thought.

“Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Kara looks down on her with such doting concern, a cherished patience like she wasn’t just minutes ago pinning Lena to the fridge door and dragging wet moans from Lena’s throat with just the dips of her tongue into her mouth alone.

Lena swallows, now intimately empathetic with how embarrassed Kara had been last time. “Can we… I’m sorry, can we do something else?”

Kara’s eyes soften, and she laughs as she smiles, her expression changing so quickly it’s like this was the plan all along. “Of course we can. You wanna order pizza? I’m starving.”

xx

And sometimes it’s Kara.

They’re in Lena’s bathroom. She’d said something about a hot shower, which had then made Kara’s pupils grow twice in size, and next thing either of them knew they were kicking off their clothes and Lena was dragging Kara into the bathroom by the skinny black tie around her neck.

She’s just undoing the white button-down when Kara says it. Well, more like blurts it out.

“I haven’t been with anyone.”

There’s an unspoken, _ since you. _

Lena’s hands still as she pulls her eyes away from Kara’s bare, defined collarbones and up to her face.

It’s a sweet idea, she supposes. In theory. It’s also a sentiment that Lena wants to echo back, and she could if she wanted to be technical about it. She never really slept with anyone, but yet again she finds herself thinking about the women who nearly made it that far, who she very well imagined in her bed, how she showed up at her ex’s door in the middle of the night with the sole purpose of screwing her — even if it never went that far, it still would feel like a lie to say there was no one, and the fact that Lena’s mouth hangs slightly open but nothing emerges seems to be more indicative an answer than anything.

“God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like— You don’t have to—” Kara’s jaw sets in a firm line, and she ducks her head. Lena, throat stiff and lips cold, already knows what’s coming before Kara’s stepped away, pointing vaguely to the door. “You know what, I uh, I actually already showered this morning, so I’ll just, I’ma be here when you get out?”

It’s not until Lena’s almost finished with her shower that she wonders why Kara told her in the first place, as if to prove something, like this is a truth she owes Lena. 

Kara’s already asleep in her bed when she comes out. 

xx

This is just to say that it’s not easy just because they want it to be. 

They argue. Not a _ lot, _ per se, but enough. It could maybe be a testament to how much they trust each other, maybe, that she’s so unafraid of confrontation because she trusts Kara more than whatever silly squabble they’re tangled in. 

They’re in Lena’s office, Kara’s just come in for a quick lunch.

“If I’m the one to explicitly tell them, rather than let anyone continue to speculate, then we control the narrative,” Lena paces the room, impatient and lecturing more like she’s pitching to a faceless boardroom than having a conversation with a human being.

By Kara’s clipped tone, Lena thinks maybe she can tell.

“I know. You said that already. I’m just saying maybe we should wait. You keep saying this is a critical point for your career, and I don’t think you should mess with that.”

“Good thing I don’t care what anyone thinks, then.”

“Then I don’t understand why you _ want _ anyone to know, why can’t we just—”

“What, keep it a secret?” 

Kara groans, her head tipping back in frustration. “You could actually listen to me for five seconds, then you’d know that’s not what I meant.”

Lena’s unfazed by Kara’s annoyed edge. “Do you not want people to know who you are? Are you having doubts about being with someone like me? If it’s about your privacy, I can understand that, but there’s not all that much I can realistically do about it, so you better make that clear now.”

“No, I don’t care about privacy, but it’s nice of you to be so upfront about your priorities.”

“Then what?” Lena turns to the window with a contorted frown like she doesn’t have the guts to be so antagonizing directly to Kara’s face. “You just want to continue sneaking into each other’s apartments late in the night for the rest of our lives like we have something to hide? Or would you seriously rather I run off with you to some nameless island where no one knows who I am?”

She half expects Kara to follow after her, but she only hears a sigh instead. “All I mean is that you know better than anyone that you can’t take something back once it’s out there.”

At first, Lena whirls around, anger for this circling argument and humiliation hot on her tongue, because how _ bold _ Kara, of all people, must be to remind her of that. “And why do you think I would want—”

“I couldn’t care less if I wake up on the cover of People Weekly tomorrow,” Kara bursts, cutting Lena off. “I’m just saying I don’t know if you should want to be on it next to me.” And then, gentler, like a white flag, she adds, “I’d tell every media outlet in this city all about how much I love you if you wanted me to. I just think, maybe, _ you _ should wait.”

The temper dissipates like sand.

Perhaps, yes, if she stopped for just one moment to do anything but listen to the sound of her own voice, she would realize Kara may not feel so secure with confrontation, at least not for the same reason that Lena does.

Lena is more tentative this time as she crosses around her desk, sitting down slowly beside Kara. 

“You still think I’m going to change my mind, don’t you?”

Any confusion in Kara’s face at Lena’s sudden change in demeanor now shuts down, and she looks away, biting the inside of her cheek. “It’s not that I think you will, but I’m just me. And you’re you. I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret, is all.”

Lena reaches into Kara’s lap and takes her hand, infinitely more interested in adoring Kara than fighting her. 

“I’m sorry. I just… Kara, I just want to take you on a date, and I want to stop getting notifications informing me that I’m in a secret relationship with Gayle.”

Shaking her head, Kara finally looks back at Lena, unease in her quiet, caring eyes. “And we can still do that. It’s not like we haven’t been out together before.”

“And what about when I want to do this in public?” Lena asks, lacing her fingers through Kara’s.

She shrugs. “It’s not weird for friends to hold hands.”

Lena raises an eyebrow, a soft laugh under her breath. She shifts closer now, her knee brushing against Kara’s and her face close enough to hear the catch of Kara’s breath.

“And this?”

“Well, uh, I mean, some friends are pretty lax about their personal space.”

“And… how about this?” Lena’s hand abandons Kara’s for the purpose of sliding under the soft hem of her loose white tee, dragging her nails across Kara’s abdomen, trailing along the waistband of her jeans.

Kara’s skin twitches under the touch, and she crosses her legs, clearing her throat. “I, uh, I-I can be subtle.”

Lena smiles, leaning her mouth close enough that her lips graze an ear lobe. “I think you’re being the opposite of subtle, darling.”

When Kara tugs Lena onto her lap with an adorably frustrated huff, and Lena lets her hands explore more shamelessly under Kara’s top, they seem to forget the argument in the first place. 

Lena also ends up being late to her next meeting, and Jane has to subtly hand her a napkin to wipe off a missed smear of lipstick on her chin before letting her walk into the boardroom.

Of course they argue. Of course Kara wields the sort of power to send Lena’s mind driving up and down the walls with a fiery advocacy. Of course Kara is also one of the few people in the world who has no qualms about pushing back up against a Luthor. 

But of course Lena loves her all the more for it.

xx

Their first fight is a different matter.

This isn’t like disagreeing over a publicity announcement or fighting over pizza toppings, something that can be resolved with a rightly-timed kiss or touch. No, it’s positively not one of those times.

“I never _ said _ it was a dead-end job.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t have to.” Kara drops their cleared dishes into the sink with a loud enough clatter that Lena momentarily worries she’s broken the plates. Kara’s never been one to properly lose her temper, not in the same way Lena can, but she knows how when Kara gets defensive, she’ll say just about anything. So, normally? Lena doesn’t push, she usually would have dropped this by now.

It was just supposed to be a nice date night in. They both miraculously squeezed a night off at the same time, an actual one at that. Alex was out to eat with Sam and Ruby, and Kara just wanted to make her dinner — which was a terrifying prospect at first, but, food-wise at least, it ended up great. 

She’s not really sure how they even got here, how it all went so wrong so fast, how she so miraculously manages to keep saying the wrong thing over and over again.

They were talking about Lena’s latest idea for services to offer with her mental health initiative, and she turned the question around to ask Kara about how things at work are going for her, and then Kara just shrugged and told her, “Same as it always is. I’d rather talk about you.”

There was a better way to phrase it, a more sensitive approach, but Lena wasn’t quick enough to think of it.

“Wouldn’t you rather be doing something worth talking about, then?”

She didn’t _ mean _ it like that, she didn’t, she just wanted to say that Kara deserves something _ she _ feels is worth talking about.

Kara’s fists had clenched around nothing and now, of course, they’re here.

“I know you.” Lena sits at the island now, her arms crossed. “I wouldn’t even be trying to have this conversation if I thought you were happy.”

Kara turns back around to Lena with a plea in her eyes. “And I’m happy with _ you _.” 

But Lena’s never been one to back down, and Kara should know that. She cares too much to let this go.

“Yes, maybe right now, but I don’t care if your dream is to load pieces of plastic on a conveyor belt or if it’s to go to the damn moon, I just don’t want you to settle. I want you to have more than just me.”

She regrets saying it as soon as it comes out.

“Obviously I have more than just you,” Kara scoffs, and by the hard set of Kara’s jaw, Lena knows how dangerous this territory is. 

Oh, how she knows. 

“I have Alex, my friends, this apartment, I can pay my bills on time. I’m not as pathetic as you think I am just because I’m not off saving the world every day like you.”

_ “Jesus, _ Kara, I’ve never thought you were pathetic.” Lena rubs her face in frustration. “But you said it yourself, that this wasn’t the future you imagined for yourself.”

“Plans change.”

“You’re a writer, Kara, an incredible one at that, and you didn’t have to give up on it.”

Another slip. Truly, how many strikes will it take before she actually manages to say something right? Or, better yet, before Kara throws her out altogether?

“Give up?” Kara echoes incredulously. “I didn’t just quit because I was lazy and the work got too hard, I quit when it became the complete embodiment of everything I hated about myself. Leaving CatCo was the best choice I’ve ever made for myself, and I’m sorry if that makes me such a disappointment to you.”

“Why would I ever be disappointed in you? But okay, fine, don’t be a writer if you don’t want to. But then at least just take the time to find what it is you want to do.”

Kara barks a laugh, a bitterness rolling off her tongue like spoiled wine as she turns her back and pulls open the fridge door. “Oh, that is so easy for you to say.”

“What?”

“I can’t just quit my job and go soul-searching.” Kara waves her hands exasperatedly, turning around with a seltzer can in hand. “I don’t have some bottomless trust fund to fall back on.”

“That’s what you’re worried about? If that’s what it is, you know I would—”

“Don’t.” She stills, the aluminum creaking in her clenched hands. “Whatever you’re going to say, just don’t.”

“You know I don’t care about the money, I don’t see why you won’t just let me help you.”

God, Lena should’ve learned by now to just keep her mouth shut.

“Not caring about money doesn’t make you humble, Lena,” Kara says darkly, tone low. “It just means you have the privilege not to.”

_ Shut up, shut up, shut up. _

“Then let me actually do something good with that privilege.”

“I am _ not _ one of your charities,” Kara snaps, the vein of her neck throbbing with this pulse of defense. “I fought like hell to get where I am today, and I am proud of that. If you’re not, then that’s your problem to deal with, but chasing the idea that everyone can find something they’re passionate about is not worth the risk of losing it all over again for another stupid pipe-dream that doesn’t even exist.”

Lena’s blood thuds in her ears, not like arousal or dread, but just a terrifying unknown. “Of course I’m proud of you.”

“I know you’ve always had a habit of projecting, but don’t pretend you want me to have a better job for _ me. _ At least own up to the fact it would just be so much easier for you to announce our relationship if I wasn’t such a deadbeat.”

It’s like she doesn’t even hear Lena anymore, and Lena’s not sure she blames her. She can’t find the right words, doesn’t know where to start to untangle them out of this trench she’s buried them in. 

“Am I not enough for you like this?” Kara continues heatedly. “Which is it? Are you too embarrassed to be dating a lowlife like me and so you want to fix my status, or am I just another poor trophy to sponsor so you can prove to the world just how charitable you are?”

She’s not sure what part digs under skin more, what splits the careful glass behind her eyes.

The fact that Kara imagines Lena to think so little of her, or that Lena might still be this ignorant after all this time.

And, oh, Lena doesn’t want to make this about her, she doesn’t. But she can’t shake off the nagging thought that Kara maybe would still be writing if it weren’t for her. She knows Kara’s not broken, not something to be fixed, but who would she be if she weren’t to try and push Kara to be who she _ wants _ to be? 

Is that even her place? To think she knows what that is?

Maybe Kara’s figured out how dark she can really be, realizes how it isn’t so far fetched an idea that Lena’s just that arrogant and selfish.

No, this isn’t one of those times where they can just brush off what’s been said and come to a compromise, where they agree to disagree.

Eyes burning, Lena can look nowhere else but at the stone of Kara’s seething, trembling eyes.

“I could never be embarrassed of you,” she says thickly, blinking back the sting. “I never meant you’re not the best version of yourself now, I just… I’m sorry I don’t know how to support you to be whoever it is that you want to be, like you’ve done for me. I’m sorry.”

She leaves, and Kara doesn’t follow.

xx

She does, on the other hand, show up at Lena’s condo four hours later.

It’s nearly two in the morning. Lena opens the door, and Kara’s leaned up against the frame with round, apologetic eyes and a half-grimace of a smile. 

She holds up a tub of blue raspberry cotton candy, a token of an old memory. “I’m sorry.”

Lena’s not sure if she’s even mad or just disappointed, in Kara or in herself.

But she does know this wasn’t how she wanted tonight to end.

Lena finds she can only step forward, tucking her face into Kara’s neck and wrapping her arms around her lower back. “I’m sorry, too,” she mumbles. “I didn’t mean to make you think you’re not enough because of your job, or that you were something for me to just throw money at and save.”

Kara’s empty hand traces into Lena’s hair, cupping the back of her head. “You didn’t. I just didn’t know how to face the fact that you might be right. About me wanting to do something else, I mean.” A low chuckle. “I still don’t know. It scares me, honestly.”

Lena pulls back only slightly, a knit in her brow. “What do you mean?”

Kara nudges them into the living room, and Lena flicks on the lights. She’d been in bed when she heard the knock at the door, the house asleep for all intents and purposes, but she herself still laying wired and awake, staring at the ceiling, volatile thoughts chasing back and forth around her mind like marbles.

Now, the muscles along Kara’s jaw are still stiffly coiled as Lena sits beside her on the couch, the cotton candy left forgotten on the coffee table. A hard edge remains in her eyes, but her touch is softer now, her demeanor more gentle as her hand falls down to Lena’s, and she absently brushes their fingertips together, back and forth.

“Those few months I did work for CatCo,” Kara starts, staring at their hands, words slow and timid like snowfall, such a stark contrast from their fight before. “I’ve just never hated anything more. I’ve never... hated… anything. But I did. Writing anything for them was like pulling teeth. Every minute in that office was like chipping away pieces of myself. I felt like I couldn’t even breathe when I woke up each morning and remembered I had to go back. And so, when I finally quit, I felt free. Like, no, obviously bartending isn’t anything I’d love to do forever, but, when I got this job — I don’t know how else to describe the _ relief _ I felt other than… I just finally felt like me again. Veronica had me cut off from the restaurant industry, Andrea had me boycotted from ever so much as coming near a newspaper again. It’d been over half a year since I had a stable job. This? This was something I fought for, however small it seems now. And I can’t help but feel like, if I give it up, I won’t ever find anything else.”

Lena exhales quietly, brushing a twist of blonde hair behind her ear. “I can understand that.”

“Can you?”

It’s not said maliciously, Kara just turns to Lena with this awfully lonely uncertainty, like even something so simple as being understood is still an unfamiliar beacon on a distant shore.

Lena chooses her next words carefully, determined to express herself clearly this time. “I don’t want to act as if I know what you’ve been through, or that this is the same thing, but I did spend a long time pretending I didn’t hate the person I was becoming. I buried myself in my work, and suddenly one day I couldn’t understand why I resented everything I thought I’d always wanted.”

Kara’s gaze is so open and receptive, so gentle. “So, what changed?”

Lena tilts her head, not so much with a smile, but rather just peace. “You.” 

At Kara’s skeptical look, Lena laughs, squeezing her hand.

“No, really. I don’t mean to imply you were this magical puzzle piece missing from my life, as much as you’d love to hear that. But you reminded me of why I wanted to do all of this in the first place.”

“Which was, what?”

“To help people, without any strings attached. I suppose I still was all that time, but L-Corp just became an outlet to replace my entire self-worth. I wasn’t doing it for all of these people anymore, I had made it about me, like an excuse for making myself out as a victim to some imagined, horrible tragedy. It was for a distraction, for my redemption with the public, to make my mother love me, to get over you. I based everything on it, and I was surprised when it couldn’t support it all.

“And then you came along. Again. And you were just so unashamedly yourself, even when I didn’t recognize you. Especially then. I tried to put you in all of these little boxes to fit this narrative in my head, and you pushed back. You looked at me as if to say, _ this is me, and you can take it or leave it. _ I didn’t know how to come to a place like that. But you did, and I’ve always admired that about you.”

Kara leans into her touch, but her eyes are still far away and dubious. “I’ve always known you could do anything, Lena. I would’ve told you sooner, if I’d realized you didn’t see that.”

“I know, darling, but it’s not even about seeing I had some grander potential. This country has been kissing my ass for two years now saying I’m going to save the healthcare system, which — I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s not what matters. It doesn’t matter if I succeed, because all anyone will remember is whether I tried. And you are the one who made me want to. You still do. You helped me see everyone I wanted to try _ for _ when I had spent so long putting all of that effort into suppressing everything. A society that once hated my very name has now come to glorify me, not just because of my work but because of how you believed in me when no one else did. I may have the support of the entire world behind me, but Kara Danvers, _ you _ are my hero.”

When Kara looks away, just for a moment, Lena lifts her hand to catch Kara’s cheek, to pull her back, tone firm.

“I am so proud of you. You have had to fight for everything you’ve ever had, every day of your entire life. I’m not embarrassed of you, I’m _ inspired. _ That’s why I know you can do anything you want to do, because a strength like that is timeless. I don’t care what you do, or how long you do it for. It doesn’t make a difference to me whether you’re a bartender or a senator, so long as it’s not something you settle for because you think you can’t accomplish more. If you want to try something else, I’ll help you in any way you like. And if you need to do it on your own, I will still be here. But I don’t give a damn what anyone else says.” 

Kara’s quiet for a few seconds, yet it feels like an eternity, before she laughs, a quiet, disbelieving thing. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“You just… you see me. And I don’t know what I ever did to deserve that.”

“Well, it helps on both accounts that you are quite easy on the eyes.”

Kara rolls her eyes, and slowly, Lena can make out the returning clarity of her pale blue irises, like the break of the sky after a cloudy morning. It’s all so ordinary, when it comes down to it. If Lena ever had only one dream for Kara, it would always be to part those clouds.

“You made a mistake,” Lena says simply. “It was a long time ago, and you paid for it far more than I ever did. And these last few months, you have proven more than enough times that you never wanted anything but the best for me. Looking back, if I were in your shoes? I honestly can’t imagine I would have done anything much differently. You deserve so much more than you’ve been given, Kara. But I’m not worried about the unfairness of the world because I trust in your resilience and your ambition far more.”

A slow smile spreads across Kara’s face, even with damp eyes, but a tear never falls. “God, I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Sporting a smile of her own, her pulse still races as she watches Kara lean in, but something else occurs to her, and she drops a hand to Kara’s chest. “Oh, before I forget though, for the record?” 

Kara levels Lena with an amused smile.

“If I do ever see Andrea again, I _ will _ kick her ass.”

“Again?” Kara laughs, but then her mouth turns down into a frown. “Wait, do you know her? Like, personally?”

“We went to school together. She didn’t tell you?” 

Kara shakes her head. 

Lena hadn’t really expected to be the one to elaborate on this, and now it all feels silly more than anything else. “We just went to the same high school for a minute. It was nothing, really.”

At Kara’s raised eyebrows, Lena sighs, sitting up a little straighter. “Alright, fine, but it’s not anything very exciting. It was before I transferred to Mount Helena. And she… well, she was my first.”

“Your first what?”

At Lena’s pointed stare, Kara has mastered the dramatics of a full-out gasp, and Lena would laugh if she weren’t so sheepish about it now.

“No, oh my god, what? Are you kidding? Lena, tell me you’re kidding.”

“Truly, it’s nothing.”

“Wow. Just when I feel like I know everything about you, I learn something new.”

“It was a _ very _ long time ago,” Lena emphasizes, but Kara hardly seems to hear her, caught up with her own fascination. “And nothing ever came out of it. My mother paid her to never speak to me again.”

Sighing, Kara quirks her brow leniently. “I mean, it makes sense.”

“What does?”

“Like, it explains why she’s so obsessed with you. Every conversation I’ve ever had with her, it was all Lena-this and Lena-that, even I was getting sick of hearing it. Honestly, she might still be in love with you.”

The edges of Lena’s mouth twist up in a faint smirk. “You know, you’re starting to sound a little jealous.”

With a laugh, Kara just restlessly pulls Lena towards her, shaking her head. “Not at all, don’t worry. I know I have nothing to be jealous of, not when I have you right here.”

_ Yes, _ Lena thinks as Kara’s warm fingers thread into her hair and soft lips brush against her own. 

_ Yes, you do have me. _

xx

So, saying it’s not easy is not to say that it isn’t at least going _ well. _

Things are still littered with gemstones of moments that are so pure of heart and unflinchingly happy that they make Lena stagger with shock. Things that are so mundane, so simple, so commonplace, yet they wrap around her like the drape of sun-basked silk around her shoulders.

There’s the first time Kara meets Hope, how she spends over an hour talking with the household device about anything that comes to mind, about golden retrievers and pie recipes and sunflowers and Saturn’s moons, all while laying down on Lena’s couch with her head in Lena’s lap, laughing with the warmth of the sun on her lips, her blonde hair spilled over Lena’s thighs, a portrait of beauty. Not to mention her painfully _ adorable, _ rambling excitement that Hope is so much smarter and interactive than Alexa or Siri, and then her delight when Hope responds with a polite, clear, _ “Thank you, Miss Danvers.” _

There’s the final touches of permanence that Lena adds to her office at L-Corp, replacing the generic artwork with pieces she actually enjoys, that just feel more like her. She has a few paintings she bought from ArtLife years ago that had started to gather dust in their Metropolis storage unit. She has a lucky bamboo plant that Sam had gifted her, sitting at the corner of her desk, alongside the same lucite paperweight with a black scorpion in the center that Sam had gifted her two years ago. There’s a framed photograph on her desk that James took of her and Kara on her couch with a GameCube controller in hand and Kara’s finger then wrapped around hers, teaching her the instructions to play. It had been the first game night Lena came to since after everything, the first time Lena truly felt like she belonged somewhere beside a conference room or a lonely bar. Beside that is another photograph Kara had taken on her phone, this one of Gayle and Lena having lunch on the ski lodge terrace, the backdrop of the setting sun behind them, Gayle making a horrible attempt at holding a bite of food out for Lena that she had spilled over her shirt just moments after the picture was taken. She has a paper crane she stole from Kara’s room that now hangs by her office window, bright and pure under the weight of the National City sunlight (“Hey,” Kara had warned with a frown. “This is a loan. I’m gonna want that back.”) There’s the afternoon Sam visits for lunch with Ruby, and there’s her knowing smile when she points out that she had been the one to suggest adding color to the place, and she _ had _ been the one to predict Lena would end up staying. 

Rolling her eyes fondly, Lena lets her have this one. 

After all, Lena has for more people to thank than just Kara.

xx

They never did actually return to the conversation of publicly announcing their relationship. Not exactly, but after having been assured that the root of Kara’s disagreement wasn’t for her own privacy, and rather concern for Lena’s? That Kara couldn’t care less about Lena shouting it from the rooftops? Well. 

By Valentine’s Day, Lena has made that all perfectly clear for the press.

They’re in the backseat of the car, and Lena is leaned back into Kara’s half-armed embrace, listening to the blonde hum under her breath as she scrolls through their friends’ group chat. Lena had actually been added to it the week before, an offhanded action on Brainy’s part when he realized Lena wasn’t seeing any of the science memes he and Winn exchanged. She didn’t have to say anything for Kara to know how touching she found this, how strange it was to realize she’s never been in any group chat at all before, and how seamless it was for Kara’s friends to welcome her in. It’s not like Lena even talks much in the actual chat. Half the time she catches up by reading over Kara’s shoulder, but the notification alone on her homescreen is a solace all on its own. 

They’re sitting like this now, Kara on her phone and Lena mindlessly tracing the veins threading along the back of Kara’s hand, when Lena remembers the conversation, and she sits up abruptly. Kara raises her eyebrows in response, hand still dangling at the back of Lena’s neck.

“What’s up?”

This feels far more like asking your crush out in middle school with a crudely written letter than it should, and Lena clears her throat. 

“I just wanted to clarify… you said you would be alright with people knowing about us?”

“People?”

“You know.” Lena gives a vague sort of nod around the vehicle like they have an audience. “Everyone.”

She expects Kara to stiffen at the reminder of their disagreement, to pose her hesitance again and urge them to wait (for what, Lena still doesn’t know) but to both her surprise and delight, Kara just gives this breathless sort of chuckle and an endearing shake of her head.

“If that’s what you want, then yeah, sure.”

“But is it what you want?” Lena presses close again, her hand falling to Kara’s thigh. “If it’s not, then I don’t care, we can wait.”

Kara tilts her head sweetly. “You do, and that’s okay. Really, I don’t mind, I just want to be with you. And maybe for Gayle to stop sending me every single article that says you two are together. She’s really smug about that, in case you were wondering.”

“And I would like to stop being on the receiving end of death-glares from Imra, so. I’m glad we’re on the same page about that one.”

No, they didn’t return to the topic until now, and it hardly seems worth fussing over the details on the _ how. _

She just figures it will come naturally.

xx

Neither of them really wanted anything too extravagant for the holiday. Lena had only managed to finish her work by six, and Kara had to work an early morning shift at eight.

They emerge now down the steps of National City’s Chocolate House, having spent the evening touring the facility and tasting the various delicacies, while also trying and failing their hand at truffle-making. Lena’s just about drunk off her amusement, giggles over watching how many sweets Kara can stomach without getting sick, the childlike glee in Kara’s eyes when they were given a case (of the professionally-made ones) to take home, which is tucked under the blonde’s opposite arm now.

Someone must have seen Lena arrive, because their first step outside sparks a half-dozen camera flashes, and a small handful of reporters crowd the foot of the steps like the messy bottom of a jewelry box. This isn’t the first time this has happened, of course, but in the past they’re better prepared, more subtle about it. Kara would usually leave before Lena or trail along shortly after, and it was always during the peak of something else going on, the reporters having specific questions catered to L-Corp or her work, rather than the superficial gossip of whoever is in her company.

This is obviously less… well, _ inconspicuous. _ Coming out of what might as well be a class for aphrodisiacs on the holiday of love is implicating, to say the least.

Kara’s already letting go of her hand, most likely out of habit than anything, but Lena hangs onto it, firm.

They of course still have questions about L-Corp and Spheerical Industries, and Lena even hears a faint one asking about Lillian’s leadership back in Metropolis, but for the most part, they’re all about the here, the now, and the _ who. _

Lena is about ready to ignore them all, seeing her driver already pushing out of the car at the curb and clearing a path through the reporters. She was especially wanting to leave given that their appearance holding hands on a night like this should be enough of an announcement to quiet the rumors as need be, not making it any more glamorous than necessary.

But.

“Miss Luthor, does Gayle Marsh know you’re currently out on Valentine’s Day with another woman?”

It really does always come down to that damn heiress, doesn’t it?

This stops her in her tracks, which in turn tugs Kara’s arm to a stop, and after a sharp scoff of disbelief, Lena finds herself grinning like she owns the highest title in this city, and oh, it has nothing to do with class.

“Yes, she does know, actually.” Lena turns back to the reporter with a sharply manicured tongue. “Gayle is a very dear friend of mine, and so I absolutely told her that I would be taking my girlfriend out this evening. A woman who is standing right here, who I happen to love very much, and who I will _ happily _ be taking home with me tonight. Alone, if you wouldn’t mind.”

To her surprise, Kara lets out a loud, delicious laugh as Lena tugs her along to the car again, as addictive as the sugar they’ve been tasting all night. Maybe it’s that euphoric high, maybe Lena just likes the idea of the world knowing that she has the gift of this woman on her arm more than she realized, who knows.

All she knows is that she can’t wait. 

And so, just as the driver pulls the car door open, still on the sidewalk, Lena pulls Kara by the collar of her crisp Oxford shirt, and Kara lets out a faint, startled squeak once again. A smile like the devil on her lips, Lena glances down to Kara’s own, knowing exactly how the heady desire of her eyes is on picture-perfect display for the buzzing curiosity of the reporters around them.

It’s certainly not for them, not for the investors, the fans, the adversaries. No, this moment of demonstration on show for the world is done for no one but the woman before her, and so when Lena pulls Kara into a sweet, molasses kiss that is positively not appropriate for the cameras, it’s like nothing’s changed at all. They may as well be alone, for all Lena cares. 

Of course Lena doesn’t need anyone else to know. Having Kara’s gentle but strong hand in hers and knowing that she stands beside her will always be more than enough. But it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t also want to, quite literally, show the world just how disgustingly in love she is.

Okay, maybe there was a fair bit of wine involved in the tasting, too.

“How long you think it’ll take for them to figure out who I am?” Kara asks once in the car. 

With a partition up so as not to give Jason an eye-full in the rearview mirror, Lena is already crawling into Kara’s lap and bending down to taste the hot pulse of her neck, her own dress hiking up her legs. Lena makes a faint sound of indifference at the question, and she mumbles into her warm skin, “Andrea’s probably already throwing her tablet across the room, I imagine.”

“Wait, wait.” Kara’s hands tap at her hips, and Lena pulls back with a huff of impatience only to find Kara sporting a cocky smile. “So, I just wanted to make sure, I _ am _ your girlfriend?” 

“God, you are so fucking stupid,” she sighs with a needy groan as she tugs Kara’s mouth to hers. 

They’re not perfect, their relationship never was. Far from it. 

But maybe it’s the navigating journey of these imperfections, and the fact that Lena knows Kara will do it with her, that makes it all worth the battle.

xx

She wakes up to a text message from Lillian the next morning — succinct and transparent.

_ I liked it better when you refused interviews. _


	24. her vision borrows mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well here we are
> 
> TW: there’s some discussion of sex-related anxiety this chapter, and if you would like to skip that, it’s about halfway-ish in with the section that begins with ‘“Can I ask you something?”’ if you just skip to the next ‘xx’ break, you can avoid it :) not super integral to the chapter as a whole, just some necessary discussion of feelings
> 
> first of all, a million thanks to wendy and lyd, they both have helped me insanely through this and i couldn't have done it without both of them
> 
> this chapter is also brought to you by everyone on twitter who donated to various blm causes. i offered posting this chapter ASAP as incentive for donations to causes of their choosing, and here we are. check out my twitter (@vellanille) too if you want to contribute — many people have asked if i have a patreon/ko-fi, and the answer is no, but if you'd like to support me and get more access to my writing, i'll be offering more incentives like this in the future with proof of donations, SO. check that out, i hope everyone is staying safe, and that we're all doing our part
> 
> i'll just say this now rather than at the end, but thank you all for all your love, support, comments, and kudos throughout this fic. i read every single comment and message you guys send, and they always are so thoughtful and kind, thank you for making this such a fun experience for me too. this was my first supercorp fic but there's gonna be more to come. i posted the first chapter to a prison penpal au already, check that out if you'd like, and you can also expect a collab with wendy sometime this summer! along with a few other things
> 
> anyway, i'll shut up. don't be a stranger xx

“I still don’t understand what it is you’re looking for. I think I might actually be losing more of a grasp on it with every other store we go into.”

Gayle squints through the cloudy lens of her pearl-grey aviators. “Did your mother ever tell you to not wear any jewelry too gaudy or it distracts from your face?”

“Um, no. Lillian’s idea of parenting consisted more of, ‘don’t touch the liquor cabinet’ and ‘please never cry anywhere I can hear you.’”

“Well, least she said please.”

Lena hurries after Gayle, up yet another storefront’s polished brick steps, just as two security personnel pull open the heavy-set doors, ornate with intricate bronze furnishings ahead. 

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

Stepping inside the DeBeers lobby, heels clicking onto the gold, wool carpet and emerging underneath a tasteful bath of natural sun from the skylight above, Gayle smiles. It’s an immaculate, glittering thing that lines her lips, a smile that puts the crystal ornaments on the walls to shame. It’s endearing how much more glamorous Gayle looks these days, how she thrives in her skin and her smile alone looks like a trademark for class. Maybe it’s just a pose for being in public, or maybe it’s how addicted Gayle is to money and they just happen to have been hitting up the most expensive jewelers in National City.

The truth lies somewhere in a nauseatingly sappy explanation that Lena is by no means going to point out.

She’d tease Gayle about it if she thought that she would show any actual shame. But the last time Kara so much as asked Gayle how the other woman was doing, Gayle was pulling up a private recording on her phone that was absolutely not an appropriate thing to play at a late brunch when both people involved in said video are present at said brunch.

That’s about the first and last time Lena agrees to a double-date.

Gayle pushes her sunglasses over her tawny hair just as a store clerk in a slim suit approaches, holding a tray with two flutes of sparkling wine, a strawberry perched on each rim.

Lena purses her lips. “How many places did you call ahead to say we were coming?”

“All of them.” Gayle flashes a wink as she takes one of the proffered drinks before addressing the clerk. “Ms. Luthor here would like to see your most extravagant neckwear selections. She has this…” Gayle scrunches her nose, lowering her voice. “A  _ blemish _ she’d like to hide, if you know what I mean.”

“I do not—” Lena hisses, though Gayle is already strolling away into the store, leaving Lena alone with him. She forces a laugh, accepting the glass graciously. “I’m so sorry, she’s— she’s kidding, she just, she does that. Thank you.”

Lena quickly rushes after Gayle yet again to the central display case. “I told you about that rash in confidence. And screw you, I got rid of it. Kara can’t even notice it anymore.”

“You’re still going to need something nice.” Gayle doesn’t look up as she peruses, just gestures to her own upper lip vaguely. “And I can still see it, by the way. Kara’s lying to you.”

“Again, screw you.”

“Sorry, you missed your window for that.”

“What are we doing?” Lena huffs once more. “What are you even looking for? This is the ninth store you’ve dragged me into and you haven’t so much as bought an earring. I thought you said this was important. You do realize I cancelled three meetings to come here with you today?”

“It  _ is  _ important.” Gayle pouts, but it’s for show, plastic and exaggerated. “I needed someone to carry my bags.”

“Cute, but that would require you to actually have any bags to show for the last four hours.”

She has to rush after Gayle again when the blonde lets out an extended groan, tipping her head back as she walks off to the front of the shop. “Is it such a crime to want to be sure about my jeweler first?”

“I know you have a perfectionist streak, but what are you so picky about? You had the damn tour of Harry Winston’s entire backroom collection, and you made Cartier run through over thirty stone grading reports. Gayle, you don’t even like diamonds.”

“If I buy something, will you stop being a cunt and lay off my case?”

“Jesus.” Lena pinches her nose. “How we have gone this long without getting escorted off the property is astonishing. Yes, I’ll stop, and my faith that you haven’t completely set this all up just to waste my time will be restored.”

“Fine.”

Another of the clerks lingers behind the consultation desk at the front, waiting expectantly, and Gayle hands off her drink to Lena before addressing him. “Hi. Gayle Marsh. I’m here for Monsieur Aguillard, we spoke on the phone last week.”

He disappears with just a brief pleasantry, and before Lena can so much as think of setting Gayle’s stupid glass down on any of the fine, glass cases around her, the first clerk is at Lena’s side to take it for her. She thanks him, sucking in her short temper, because more likely she was about to throw it back in Gayle’s face. Shortly after, another tall, slender man emerges from a carpeted staircase across the backway and approaches Gayle with a hand outstretched, the other fastening the button of his maroon jacket. Lena falls into step behind them as he leads the way back up the stairs into his office, paying only half her attention to their chatter.

Kara was supposed to be here with them. Gayle had invited them both for a girl’s day shopping. And then, just as soon as Lena had assured Kara that she’s under no obligation to spend her day off parading around Rodeo Drive with Gayle, Kara was already texting her work’s group-chat and asking if anyone needed a shift covered as an excuse to keep busy.

“I was more saying that to be nice, you know,” Lena had said dryly, Kara’s phone already pinging from a bartender who wanted her to cover a morning banquet downtown. 

Kara, beside her on Lena’s couch, had smiled and dropped a sweet kiss on the corner of her mouth. “I know. Tell Gayle I say hi.”

It was a quick and simple fall, Kara was all too happy to leave Lena alone with this, and now she’s here, ankles sore from the ridiculous heels Gayle insisted she wear, and already hearing the terrible arguments she’s going to come up with in response to Lillian’s scolding for reorganizing her schedule later.

“Imra likes diamonds.”

Lena looks sharply up to Gayle, sitting beside her on the leather bench. “Seriously? You dragged me around for hours to buy your girlfriend a present?”

“Yeah, I wanted to get her something special.”

“You have three different personal shoppers who are all more than happy to go pick out a pair of overpriced studs.”

“You’re really going to feel like a bitch in a minute, and I can’t wait.”

“What are you talking—”

“I’m not buying her earrings,” Gayle interrupts firmly as the DeBeers assistant manager places a long, velvet-coated canister down on the glass display case. He lifts the lid gently from the sides, slowly like a cinematic reveal, and Gayle turns down to look at the gleaming bed of jewels and bands with a faint smile. “I’m buying her a ring.”

Lena blinks. “I’m sorry, you’re — Gayle, those are engagement rings.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“You’re looking at engagement rings.”

“Huh, it’s almost like I asked for their custom collection. So weird.”

Lena just flounders in shock at the display before her, at how Gayle leans forward and squints at the various gold and silver bands, inspecting each glittering stone like she’s browsing a magazine.

“Gayle. You’ve been together two months.”

“Four years cumulatively.”

“That isn’t how that works.”

“It does for me.”

“Gayle, are you insane? You two don’t even live together.”

The blonde shrugs, still not looking at her. “So, she’ll move in after the wedding.”

“How traditional of you.”

“You know, I thought you’d get this more than anyone.”

Lena laughs, incredulous. “And where would you get that idea? Impulsivity is clearly not my strong suit.”

Gayle sits up finally, leveling Lena with a flat, rather serious look. “Because I wasted four years without her. I’m not going to take her for granted twice. I know what I want, and I think if I have the chance to show her I’m all in now, then I’m not going to pass that up.”

“Then, why on earth did you drag me all over the boulevard for? What did you even need me here for?” At the firm clench of Gayle’s jaw, and how the muscle twitches as she looks back down at the bed of rings, it sinks in. Lena lets out a light laugh, finally breaking into a smile. “Wow. You’re nervous, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m fucking nervous.” Gayle’s bite is both strained and lighthearted, like she’s a coil of copper wire wound too tight. “Is it that fucking insane that I wanted my best friend to be with me while I pick out some stupid rock that’s going to make or break my future?”

The first day Lena realized that someone could like her for something other than her name was the day Sam asked Lena to move in with her in their undergrad. The first time Lena realized that blood wasn’t a precondition for family was the day Sam asked Lena to be Ruby’s godmother. 

This isn’t like that, it’s not quite the same. 

But Gayle, headstrong and bittersweet Gayle — Lena knows how acrid those words must taste on her tongue.

“Don’t,” Gayle says lowly like she can hear Lena’s thoughts. “Don’t get sappy on me now. I don’t have any Imitrex on me.”

It’s probably for the best then that Gayle isn’t looking at her face, because Lena has an incredibly wide smile stretching her cheeks that she is making zero effort to squander. 

Still, Lena can hold her cool. “I don’t think the carats in a ring will be her deciding factor, for the record.”

“Trust me, it will. If it isn’t absolutely perfect, she’ll make me do it again.”

They make an oddly perfect pairing, Lena thinks. Albeit in a dysfunctional way. Despite all the uncertainty of years apart, despite every factor weighing towards ripping them apart, despite everyone else’s conviction that they shouldn’t work… they do. Those always make for the best stories, don’t they?

Gayle’s gestures for the manager to move on with the next set. As he makes the switch, she sits up, smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle from the lap of her dress. “So, um. If she says yes—”

“She will.”

“If she says yes,” Gayle repeats impatiently, looking to Lena with warning eyes. “There was something I wanted to ask you.”

“Yes, I will make sure the wedding is the most publicized event California has seen in years.”

“Well, okay, that was a given. I didn’t think I needed to ask that one.”

“Oh, this one’s nice.” Lena sits forwards as another case is laid out in front of them, pointing to a classic cushion-cut with a rose gold band.

“Yeah, I didn’t bring you along to get aesthetic tips. Your taste is terrible.”

Lena rolls her eyes, sitting back with her champagne. “Fine, what was it that you wanted to ask?”

She’s already pieced it together before Gayle’s even worked the question out.

“Will you, Lena Luthor, without being disgustingly gay like you usually are or without making a big deal about it, please be my maid of fucking honor?”

This isn’t the first time Lena learns about loving someone out of blood, out of family. Not at all. If anything, it’s the pink kiss of Gayle’s flushed cheeks and the gleam of her unguarded, faint smile that promises Lena this won’t be the last, either.

xx

Lena always thought that her life was in Metropolis.

She thought she was fighting to build her own cornerstone in National City, that there is something to be built up at all, a place that didn’t exist before. She thought that coming here would mean to leave something behind, the place where she spent most of her adult life and forged the first gasping breaths of L-Corp. It’s not that she thinks of Metropolis so pointedly as home, but she hadn’t thought of National City itself as a place to belong. As an alternative, as a candidate, as an option at all.

More specifically, for so long, Lena didn’t think that  _ belonging _ was an achievable destination for her at all. Maybe that’s cynical, dreary, alright, she can accept that. 

It’s about the people, not the place — that much isn’t hard to understand. No, this city itself has always seemed far too keen to drive her out from its walls, has never wanted her to stay.

But, slowly, like how her and Gayle ridiculously have found a way to fit in each other’s lives like they do, the rest of the very different domains of this new life now all begin to blend seamlessly together. They connect and fall into something new, intertwined like Lena’s lived here for years, like this has always been a ground to rest on. For the first time, the city itself welcomes her, blankets protectively around both the riches she can offer and the fears that bring her to her knees — it welcomes  _ all _ of her. National City fosters these first breaks of light at a new life she is so inspired and terrified to explore, as if in order to reach the precipice she has always sought to step from, she had to never imagine it could exist.

And then there’s Kara. Of course there’s Kara. 

Whether out of greed or shame, Lena has always kept Kara to herself, kept their existence private. It’s not about whether people know about their relationship or not, but Lena has always erected up walls around her pitiful life and begged Kara to not come closer. After what little steps Kara did make it in, Lena would then beg the universe to let her have this alone, in the dark, away from the world.

But, slowly, it stopped being about Lena stepping into the various rooms of Kara’s life and Kara stepping into hers. Soon, it just became their lives together, and there is no explicit divide between them anymore. That’s not to say Lena’s kicked out every semblance of her own independence. Being strong in her own skin was never about clutching what little she had so close to her chest and refusing attachments to anything else in a scramble for security. No, it’s about being anchored and confident in letting free everything she  _ does _ have, in seeing and letting it all roam together, to leave it all be and appreciate each intricacy that bows in and out of this wavy, turbulent current. 

It wasn’t about hiding and running, it’s about how the duality of trust between two people doesn’t have to be to the exclusion of her own resilience.

It’s not so much about how this all ends, nor even how it’s yet to begin. It’s both, it’s neither, it’s as much of one as it is the other. Maybe to end isn’t to start anew, and maybe to begin isn’t to say goodbye. 

xx

Kara becoming the new favorite aunt is another thing Lena doesn’t see coming.

“Okay, so, it was just like, Danny boxed out the girl at the elbow to give me room to drive into the paint, but so Mom was like shouting at me to make the shot, and technically Pierre is the shooting guard but they weren’t open, and I’ve been practicing my three-pointers, so I did it, but then Coach Watkins was all mad because that wasn’t the play Ruchi called out, but I made the shot, so then Mom and Coach Watkins started arguing and I guess she called him some bad names because Mom’s not allowed on the sidelines anymore.”

Lena’s fairly certain that the real reason she and Kara are picking Ruby up is that Sam’s busy somewhere doing ungodly things with Alex, but Sam being banned from all away-games is too likely a story to believe anything else. 

Lena shoots a wary glance at Kara in the driver’s seat of Sam’s car before looking back over her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, those words all mean nothing to me.”

Kara catches the girl’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Hey, I was following.”

“Y’know I explained this all to Aunt Lena like a million times, and she still says that every time.”

“Fourth-grade basketball can be hard for some people,” Kara defends, squeezing Lena’s hand over the console. “Even for millionaire executive administrators who can cure degenerative diseases in under a month.”

Lena rolls her eyes and turns back to a giggling Ruby. “Alright, how about next weekend I take you to the rec center and you can show me all your cool tricks?”

“They’re not  _ tricks, _ they’re  _ moves,” _ Ruby groans like she’s spelling something out for a young child, and Kara snorts. “God, fine, but only if Kara and Alex come too.”

“What, why? You used to love when we hung out just you and me.”

“Yeah, but you’re old now. They actually get what’s going on now.”

Kara’s laughter sings louder as Lena’s jaw hangs open, and Ruby only gives her the haughty look of breaking the cold, hard truth. 

“You do realize they’re both older than me?”

“But they don’t act it, so you can hang out with Mom and talk grown-up stuff, and me and Kara and Alex will take care of the real stuff.”

“Yeah, Lena.” Kara shoots her a cocky grin. “Leave the real stuff to the professionals here.”

“I’m breaking up with both of you.”

“Oh, but I’m non-returnable.”

Ruby strains against her seatbelt. “What’s that mean?”

“That Lena’s not allowed to leave me.”

“Oh. Okay, yeah, I’m non-rentable too.”

“No, non-returnable,” Lena corrects.

“Non turn table.”

“Close enough.”

xx

These are the subtle types of blending lines, when the different areas of Lena’s life naturally blur together and only later does she think back and admire how something like that would once have been so strange. 

There’s also the forced kind of awkward mess that Lena is painfully aware she should never have tried to make happen.

Lena rises from the dining table with only the slightest tremor to her hand as she taps a fork against the glass. “Excuse me, if I could have everyone’s attention.”

Alex all but laughs at her, her smug grin startlingly similar to Kara’s. “You do know you could’ve just stood up and we all would look at you anyway, right? This isn’t a banquet.”

Sam sighs, her face tipping forward into her hands tiredly. “An hour, Alex. All I asked for was one hour.”

Alex shrugs and pulls out her phone. “Eh, twenty bucks was worth it. I’m Venmoing it to you now. Anyway.” She pockets away her phone again and turns to Lena with a plastic smile. “Go on, please.”

Lena’s relations with Alex have been rocky, to say the least, but there’s definitely room for a worse rift between them. And, truthfully? Lena finds some comfort in this reliable tension. It’s reassuring that someone loves Kara enough to spend this much energy antagonizing Lena at every turn. Lena respects not only this protective older sister, but the constant push-and-pull to measure up to something. Maybe that bar is unreachable, but it doesn’t intimidate her. It makes Lena want to earn her trust, not by some clever gesture, but by showing over a length of time that she’s committed to this with Kara, that she only wants the best for her, that she’s not afraid to strive and reach for that impossible bar anyway.

No, she’s not afraid of Alex, and Lena’s not even afraid that Alex might be right. Not anymore.

It’s the kind of thing that, when someone tells her she’s going to fail, it only presses her to push harder, and once she looks back, she’ll be equally as grateful for the ones who warned her of failure as she will be for the ones who believed in her.

“Kara said no speeches,” Nia calls out from the far end of the table with a wrinkled pout. “I was really ready to give a speech about Luvers. I had one written up and everything.”

Sam chokes violently on her wine just as Lena asks, “About what?”

_ “Nothing,” _ Sam gasps, her breath ragged as Alex pounds her on the back. “Nothing, really, let’s move on.”

Kelly sits forward to catch sight of Nia down the table, intrigued. “I’m actually more interested to hear what she has to say.”

Lucy lifts a hand. “I second that,”

Kara jumps to her feet, her neck taut, her glare adorable . “Everyone just shut up and listen to Lena.” She lays her glower up and down the long table of their friends like a beacon ready to pick out one misplaced comment, but to Lena it looks more like a sweet child struggling to look intimidating, her lips downturned and cheeks pink. 

God, does she love her.

When the table hushes quiet, it’s not an absence of sound that washes through them, it’s a silk of silence that laces this moment together like a ribbon around her wrist.

“Thank you.” Lena presses her tongue against the back of her teeth, resisting self-consciousness like fighting off a shiver as she looks down across this odd array of friends, this new home. There’s no reason for her to even feel this way; being a well-versed public speaker is half her job. Though, it’s hard to say that skill strays far beyond L-Corp. She doesn’t have the best track record with more…  _ personal _ public events and interviews.

“Right, anyway. I just wanted to say that it has been a true pleasure knowing all of you these last two years, and I have the utmost appreciation for each of you.”

Alex squints. “You can’t talk like a normal person for five minutes, can you?”

“No.” 

“You sound like you’re preparing your own eulogy.”

_ “Alex.” _

“Yeah, yeah, fine, I’m sending you another twenty now.”

“Moving on.” Lena clears her throat. “You are all a very strange group of people, and I never thought I’d be making a toast with Two-Buck Chuck, much less making one to a room full of actual friends.”

“Weren’t you going to major Hollywood parties like yester—”

Sam clamps her hand aggravatedly down on Alex’s hand, her scowl menacing. “If you say one more word, I swear to god I’m cancelling our Cancún trip.”

Alex is fairly tame after that.

Rather than offset by the constant disruptions, it just bubbles another fresh flower of laughter from Lena, somewhere deep and tender, a sore spot that’s healed into a softer bed. It replicates exactly what she loves about these people. As much as Alex would probably hate it, she considers Lena  _ one _ of them, an equal. She’s not afraid of Lena either, and Lena can trust that Alex will always confront her with any ill-will between them. 

“Case in point.” A thread of chuckles runs through the table, and Lena smiles again. “I promise I’ll make this short, because I know most of you have already had your fill at listening to me go on about being enlightened with my gratitude, so. All I’d like to say is… I don’t know if things happen for a reason, and I’m not so sure that they do. I do know this is not a place I ever would have pictured for myself or even considered it to be something I wanted. I do know I couldn’t have come here on my own, not just in my accomplishments, but in this ridiculous journey of needing to be told time and time again that I’m not in my right mind.”

“You’re usually not,” Sam mutters.

“Since you’re the one interrupting, does that mean I can get my twenty—”

Kara tosses her napkin into Alex’s face and turns back to Lena with a candy smile like nothing happened. 

“You got this, sugar.”

A prickle of heat touches the tips of Lena’s ears, and she clears her throat. “Thank you, um… salt.”

Now it’s Alex who snorts her drink, seltzer dribbling down her mouth and chin. She waves an arm around raggedly as she struggles to compose herself, laughter intermixed with harsh, wet coughs, yet she signals for Lena to keep going.

This was all a mess before it began, but maybe that’s why Lena cares for it so viscerally.

“First, thank you all for coming.”

“I didn’t realize we had a say in—”

Alex’s words get cut off by a yelp of pain and loud stomp beneath the table. No one mentions it.

“I know you have a million other things you could be spending your Thursday night doing, so I appreciate you all making the time for this dinner.”

Lucy leans into Kelly’s side, and Lena barely catches her whispered question. “Wait, we’re not celebrating something, are we?”

“I don’t believe in fate,” Lena says quickly, the words hasty and firm, because she had befriended a group of fools, and she knows she can only hold their attention for so long. “And I’m not about to give you some rehearsed speech about how hard we have all worked for what we have, how much I appreciate all of you. No, I think I might run Alex bankrupt if I take it that far.”

Alex rolls her eyes when everyone laughs, but Lena can see the bare hint of a chuckle under her breath. Lena holds her defiant gaze, takes care not to hide her own smile.

“Alex,” she starts, and she gives a breathless laugh. “Oh, Jesus, I used to hate you.” This time, Kara is the one to start choking on her drink, but Lena carries on. “Really, I used to have nightmares about how much I wanted to hate you. You barged into my office and told me everything I wasn’t ready to hear. You were a pain in my ass because I couldn’t get you out of my head for years. Because you were right. Because you weren’t afraid to cross any lines. Because you have always made me work for it, and I can honestly say now that I hope that never changes. So, I just want to say, I genuinely do look forward to the next god-knows-how-many years of hating each other because you are my favorite person to do it with.”

Sam looks back and forth between Alex and Lena, eyebrows twisted with fright. “I think you finally shut Alex up,” she whispers.

Lena continues before that can change. “James, I adore you and your penchant for tight shirts. You’re a sweetheart, and you were one of the first people here to welcome me in. So, thank you for sucking me into this deranged group of idiots. I will forever hold that against you.”

He shrugs. “I can live with that.”

“Winn—”

“Yes, my love?”

“Never change.”

His mouth crumples as his eyes glisten, and everyone shouts encouragement for Lena to move on before he can get into it, their laughter wet with wine. 

“Lucy, I was quite honestly terrified of you when we first met.”

“As you should be.”

“And that changed after about five minutes of knowing you.” At Lucy’s  _ hmph _ and grumbling that drowns under the noise and chuckles of the room, Lena grins.

“And Kelly…” Lena sighs, her brow twitching into a frown. “You have always had this strange sixth sense of knowing when to show up and when to stop me from spiralling somewhere I shouldn’t go. I don’t entirely understand it, but I’m not going to question it either. Thank you, for being so all-knowing and wise, and also for being the only person in the world that can put Alex in her place.”

“I can put Alex in her place,” Sam mutters with crossed arms.

Alex pats her leg under the table placatingly. “Sorry. You make a good effort, though.”

Lena hurries to the end, can hear the ticking-time bomb of the crowded room. “Nia, absolutely every technique you’ve given me to get Ruby to stop calling me old has failed, but I still have a special place in my heart for your pop-culture lessons.”

Nia gives a firm nods. “Happy to be of service.”

“And Brainy.” On being addressed, he looks up from a point on the wall he’d been staring at, and blinks at her. “Please, as soon as you get tired of working for Maxwell Lord,  _ do _ let me know and I will poach you the second you give the signal.”

“Okay. Do I take a drink now?”

Nia shushes him excitedly. “No, there’s one more.”

Another thread of light laughter ripples through as Lena finally turns to Kara with a blushing face, who in turn is already shaking her head. “We don’t need to do this,” the blonde offers sheepishly.

Everyone voices their varying ways of saying that yes, she does, before Lena can get the chance. Lena only raises her eyebrows at how Kara’s skin is already flushing darker. So quick and sly to celebrate others, and always a child to be on the receiving end.

“Kara,” she says slowly, unable to keep her amusement from her low tone. “Your morning breath is awful. You’re a terrible influence and continue to keep stocking my pantry with cotton candy no matter how many times I tell you that my dentist has already noticed. You always tell me the same story at least three times, and it always upsets you when I point that out. You’re oblivious, a smart-ass, and there is no one in the world who can make me mad like you do.”

Kara snorts, and waves reassuringly to the table. “Don’t worry, Lena always has the best ‘but,’ it’s coming.”

“No, that was it.”

“What?”

“That’s all, there’s no but.”

“What do you—”

“The  _ but _ is that I love you, idiot.” Lena laughs breathlessly. “And I don’t care that being with you is taking years off my life. You’re worth the early grave.”

“Do we drink now?” Brainy whispers to Nia, and she tilts her head confusedly.

“Not really sure yet. She might be done. Maybe. Hold on.”

But Kara is grinning at Lena like she can’t quite stand her either, like she has just as long of a list of Lena’s irritating habits and pet peeves, like they both were born to infuriate each other. That’s the key, their secret. There’s no one in the world that can drive Lena so out of her mind like Kara can, and there’s no one that she’d trust more to pull her back down.

Lena draws another steadying breath, holding out her wine by the swell of the cup, and her smile feels like it’s glazed over with stained glass.

Still, suspended, tranquil in this final light.

“So, cheers to that.” A tremor like a breeze in her voice, Lena pushes past the thick mound in her throat. “Cheers to all of you, to all we have now, and to everything yet to come.”

They humor her soft-hearted moment of self indulgence, and the rattle of glasses tapping together rings around the room like a closing ballad. A knot loosens in Lena’s shoulder as she pulls a hefty gulp of the cheap wine, a relieved giggle on her merlot lips. 

Under the table, Kara’s foot brushes against Lena’s ankle, just a gentle touch. It could be mindless, maybe even an accident, but it thrums warmly under her skin. For once, Lena stops wondering if all of this is only a dream, because maybe happiness isn’t just a fantasy anymore.

xx

There’s one night after work when she ends at Kara’s apartment, having been too long since they last spent an evening together, long enough that Lena’s not sure she could count the days on both hands.

Lena sludges through the front door exhaustedly, led only by the blind smell from the delicious aroma of whatever sinful thing Kara has simmering on the stovetop, something rich with tomatoes and spices, leading Lena to collapse back against the door.

“God, that smells incredible.” Lena bends down to unclip her heels, stretching a sore kink in her back, and mustering up her best pleading smile. “I’m going to take a quick shower, but — pour me a drink first?”

Kara meets her halfway, as she’s prone to do, and procures a familiar amber cocktail from behind her back with a smile. “Already did.”

Lena glances down at the glass, the deep red liquid and the slivered orange peel half-submerged in its surface. She looks back up with a raised eyebrow.

“You’re making me dinner and my favorite drink. Is this a special occasion?”

“Is being with you not special enough?”

Lena presses her lips firmly together to quell the stupid smile that wants to break, her chest flooding with dandelion warmth. 

She huffs a laugh even as her cheeks burn, taking the drink from Kara. “You think you’re slick, don’t you?”

“Maybe, but it works for you.”

“Oh, does it now? I don’t know where you would ever have gotten that idea.”

Kara brushes an errant stray of Lena’s hair from her face, her touch breathtakingly gentle, her expression calm and serene. “Yeah,” she says quietly, now only the drink in Lena’s hands separating them, Kara’s breath light like a riesling. “I’d like to think it does.”

Lena swallows, her resolve breaks. “It— um, it does. Yes. Your stupidity does wonders for your charm.”

Kara gives a beaming smile before pressing a kiss to her mouth, one that leaves Lena pitching forward in its chaste wake. The exhaustion from just a few moments ago is a long-forgotten memory, her heart thudding in her chest with life and timid schoolgirl excitement.

“Go shower.” Kara brushes a thumb across her cheek before she steps away. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

She is.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, of co—” Kara turns around from the table she’s setting, laying down two sets of cutlery, a cute peak to her eyebrows. Her eyes immediately widen to marbles when they drop down to the bare towel that hugs Lena’s naked body, to the wet hair plastered down over her neck and back.

“Uh.” Kara’s mouth twitches like she’s trying to say too many things at once. “Maybe.”

Lena gives her another second, sets the empty glass of her drink on the kitchen counter. 

_ “Yes, _ sorry, yeah, duh, obviously.”

“Why did you tell me you haven’t been with anyone?” When Kara continues to stare at her with puzzled uncertainty, Lena elaborates. “A few weeks ago, I forget when. You told me that you haven’t been with anyone since me, and I said… well. Why did you say it?”

Kara’s gaze is still raking across Lena’s bare shoulders and legs, looking both terrified and mesmerized. “You want to talk about this… now?”

Lena glances down to herself and rolls her eyes. “Okay, sorry, this actually wasn’t intentional. I’ll go change.”

Kara lets out a squeak that sounds an awful lot like she wants to stop her, but ultimately says nothing as Lena drifts back to the bedroom to dry off. 

When she returns minutes later, now in a pair of running shorts and one of Kara’s old camp t-shirts, she finds Kara bouncing her leg at the dining table, hands clasped and staring at nothing. As soon as Lena comes into sight, she jumps back to her feet, her eyes electric with nervous anticipation. 

“You don’t have to look at me like this is a job interview, you know,” Lena says dryly as she pads across the cool floors. “I’m the same person you asked to pop a pimple on your back the other day.”

Kara frowns cutely. “But you wouldn’t even do it, I had to ask Alex.”

“Still. Principle of the thing.”

Lena pulls up a chair beside Kara at the table, pulling at her wrist. It’s less of a command, more just seeking her skin. “Is dinner ready?” Lena strokes her fingers across Kara’s palm, watching her carefully.

She nods. “Yeah, but it can wait.”

Lena slowly works her lip between her teeth, giving her own nod in response. She’s not nervous for this conversation — well, not a  _ bad _ nervous, and she suspects that Kara isn’t either. Not the kind of frail, delicate kind of nervous that teeters on a fragile edge. 

Of course Lena’s been thinking about it, of course she hasn’t stopped. It wasn’t like a switch, but when Lena stepped out of the shower, she just found that she’s tired of second-guessing.

“When I didn’t say—”

“I didn’t mean it like how it sounded,” Kara interrupts, then cringes. “Sorry, you go ahead.” But Lena encourages her on, squeezes her hand. “Right, um. I wasn’t trying to ask you who you’ve been with, or something. It’s not really any of my business.”

“It can be.”

Kara looks at her with such a soft smile, now making Lena feel like she’s now the one waiting for an interview. “I know, but not like that. I wasn’t asking you for that.”

“What were you asking, then?”

“Nothing.” Kara taps her thumb against Lena’s with a light laugh. “I really just… wanted to tell you, I guess. I’m sorry it made you uncomfortable.”

Lena nods, still biting her lip. She slides a little closer. “You can tell me if I’m completely out of bounds on this one—”

“Ruby would appreciate that reference.”

She ignores her. “—but, I was thinking about it, and I suppose I just worried that you feel as if you owe me something. That you not being with anyone somehow proves to me that your feelings were real, or something.” Lena refrains from blinking away, forces herself to hold Kara’s eye. “I wasn’t uncomfortable because you told me, I was just afraid it wasn’t for the right reason.”

“Oh.”

“I just want to say that you don’t have to keep finding ways to make up for the last two years. Not like  _ that. _ Even if you had been with someone new every month we were apart, it doesn’t change anything about us, here, now.”

Kara’s pale eyes flicker across Lena’s face, and she smiles. “You don’t have to either.”

“I don’t… what?”

“I mean we don’t have to rush into this. I’m not sitting around counting the days until we can sleep together. It doesn’t need to be this final test of solidifying our relationship, or something, and you don’t need to push yourself to be ready for something because you think it should come sooner.”

“I want it to come sooner,” Lena mutters, though a trickle of heat flushes her neck all the same. 

Kara laughs, shaking her head as she laces their fingers together. “We don’t need to force it, is all. It’ll come, sure, when it comes. You don’t have to think so hard about how this is supposed to go because whatever way it does happen, it’ll always be how it was meant to be. That’s all.”

It’s still so unnerving how fluidly Kara reads her, how she sees into a raw, twitching depth of Lena’s anxieties and pinpoints them better than Lena can. 

When Lena dips her chin, Kara chases her gaze again. “We can talk about it, if you want to. But you don’t owe me anything, either.”

Lena’s not sure how this all turned around to be about her, and a twitch throbs behind her eyes unexpectedly. It’s not really until now that Lena realizes this is something to be spoken about at all, something that won’t go away on its own. Her bottom lip trembles, and she inhales sharply as a way of relaxing this sudden unease.

“I haven’t been with anyone either,” Lena says quietly. “Not completely, but not for a lack of trying. I didn’t think it was really some big thing. I just thought I wasn’t over you. Which I wasn’t, but… I don’t know. I started overthinking it too much every time, and it never went that far before I would panic and run. I get too in my head about it. I don’t know why. It’s not because I don’t want you, that I don’t want  _ this. _ I want it more than anything, but it just… scares me sometimes.”

She quite literally feels like a child, but both of Kara’s hands frame her now, one on the side of each of Lena’s legs, and she runs them soothingly along the skin there, just an innocent, caring touch that keeps Lena’s mind from disappearing somewhere elusive. 

Kara nods in understanding, her smile as easy and open as it’s been this last year. “We can figure it out together, if that’s what you want. Or if you want to talk to someone else, that’s okay too. But waiting is okay, and you’ll have to work hell of a lot harder than that for me to ever think you aren’t worth the wait.”

Lena rubs her nose, and despite the grave weight of this conversation, she laughs wetly. “Do you know how much I hate that you always know what to say? It’s really terribly annoying.”

“C’mere.” Kara urges her into an embrace, arms wrapping securely around her shoulders. It’s a bit awkward, leaning over their knees while sitting still in their chairs, but the comfort it brings is eruptive and unmatched. She sinks into Kara, clinging to her warm skin, pressing her nose into her solid neck, and Kara presses a kiss to the crown of her hair. 

Not much time passes before sniffles, and she mumbles into Kara’s shoulder, “I don’t hate you.”

Kara’s throat rumbles with her laugh, and she pats her gently. “I know. You couldn’t if you tried.”

xx

“Alright, so.” Lena drops down at a bar seat across from Kara, clasping her hands together. “I’ve been thinking.”

This is another one of those moments where Lena tries to strategically sew together the various colors of the universe, but this time, she’s still hoping for some kind of mosaic to result from it.

Kara, clad in her traditional white button-up and skinny black tie, trails her eye slowly around the bar confusedly. “How’d you get in here?”

“You’re working a conference for entrepreneurs on small businesses. It wasn’t too hard to be let in.”

Kara’s laugh is crisp and unweighted as she wipes her hands off with a rag. “Have I mentioned how much I love when you flaunt your name around to get what you want?”

“I could stand to hear it a bit more. That’s a turn-on for you, then? My name?”

An amused smile on her lips, Kara leans her elbows on the bar. “More along the lines of finding it adorable that you’re so stubborn to get what you want, but we can talk about that part of it too.”

“Whatever, alright. Can you get me a drink for this, at least?”

Kara’s already reaching down for a bottle. “Yes, ma’am. Tell me all your woes, it’s what I’m here for.”

By the time Kara’s slides a scotch across the bar to her, Lena’s worked and re-worked over several times the right wording for what she says next.

“So… Nia works for  _ The Paragon Tribune, _ right?”

“Oh, we’re doing this again.” There’s no bitterness or resentment to Kara’s tone, just an amused lilt like she’s humoring Lena about something far more mundane than career prospects. “Yeah, she does.”

“And who runs it?”

The corner of Kara’s mouth lifts into a slow smirk, her eyes narrow. “Are you doing that thing where you pretend you don’t know something so your intentions seem more innocent?”

“Excuse me, I would never.”

“Uh-huh. But, yeah, sure, Iris West.”

“West-Allen.”

_ “Ha.” _ Kara swipes Lena’s drink back with a grin. “You did know.”

“Fuck off.” She wiggles slightly out of her seat to reach for her scotch back. “Okay, yes, I already knew that.”

“Mhm.”

“But it’s just because I don’t want to seem overbearing.” Lena settles with more delicacy to her tone, but no less determination. She’d like to think they’ve grown past the tip-toeing dialogues, the uncertain fear of saying the wrong thing so paralyzing it splinters apart altogether.

Maybe she still is learning the ropes at this communication game, though.

“And the last thing I want is to make you think you’re not enough because of whatever your resumé says.”

“I’m getting a little déjà vu right now, I think.”

Lena drops a sharp slap to Kara’s forearm. “Quit it.”

Kara backs away laughing, hands held up loosely. “Okay, I’m sorry, go ahead. Just say what’s on your mind, and we can pick apart any complications after. Have a little faith in me.”

“Right.” Lena steals a sip from her drink, but for the most part, her voice holds steady. “A few months ago, when we first started… you know, um—”

“Seeing each other?”

“Yes, that.”

“You’re really cute when you’re nervous.”

“Please stop that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

If Lena gets a quick, fleeting thrill each time Kara uses that title from behind the bar, something that would be aggravating from anyone else but from Kara it just leaves her throat dry and longing, well. That’s something to think about later.

“So, yes, then. Nia told me she had started working for the Tribune, and the projects she’d been working on. And it’s run by Iris.”

“Mm, yeah, I actually met her husband a couple times at a few conferences last year. But.. what does this have to do with me?”

“Do you remember when you first told me what kind of journalist you always wanted to be?”

Kara pauses, a slight waver to her humor. Lena remembers it like a dream — one of the first times seeing Kara after visiting Lex, her head in Kara’s lap, a marathon of paranoia smoldering in her mind — it felt like the first time Lena was seeing something genuine in Kara. No bullshit, not a scheme, just a woman talking in a quiet tone under the city twilight about her dreams for the world.

Kara nods. “Yeah, um. I said I wanted to go into scientific journalism.”

“No, you said you did that for your parents. I mean after that. You said you learned there was more to what you wanted.”

The orange fluorescence of the venue casts half of Kara’s face in shadow, emphasizes the bob of her throat as she swallows. “Sounds like we’ve both paid more attention to each other than we realized.”

“Civics. You said you wanted to go into civic journalism.”

“Yes, I said that. That was me. Yeah. Um, why do you ask?”

“What department has Nia been writing for?”

“...Civics.”

“I have a feeling you know where I’m going with this.”

A gentle sigh falls from Kara’s mouth, and though she’s far from defensive, a tired understanding has crossed her features, and she runs a hand back through the hair that’s fallen from its tie. “Yeah, I do. I really do, but you’re forgetting about the city-wide boycott Andrea put on my head.”

Lena licks her lips, working the words like a tough bite of food around her tongue. “What if… I took care of Andrea and you were free to talk to Iris? I know there are things you need to do on your own, so I wouldn’t talk to anyone unless you asked. Not that you’d need me to, I know based on how successful your work has been that she’d meet with you in a heartbeat, and not because of who it was about, but of who  _ you _ are. And I would never do anything without your—”

“I want to write a book.”

Lena’s carefully planned pitch melts right from her mouth, disintegrating like it never had any direction to begin with. “You… what?”

“Not that I have any doubt you’d manage to do whatever, with Andrea — actually, uh, when you say take care of, you don’t mean like…?”

“Are you trying to ask me if I was planning to kill her?”

“What? Of course not,” Kara laughs, standing up straight and rolling her shoulders back. “No, um, but so — thank you, for everything you’re doing and trying to do, but I’ve realized it’s just not what I want anymore. Not right now. And it’s not because I don’t think I can, but I want to do some exploring, I think. Do some research on my own about what’s going on in the world, and not work through the lens of someone looking to make money off the front page.”

Even if this means the hours she spent reading online and finding old connections in news publications have now all gone to waste, Lena can’t tamper down the slow bloom of excitement climbing within her. “So, a book.”

“Yeah.”

Lena’s itching to ask what about, to ask what genre, to ask if it’ll even be nonfiction or autobiographical or not, but before the syntax can form, it too bleeds away. It doesn’t matter, not like this.

“Then, well. A book it is.”

It never mattered.

Lena doesn’t push beyond, and though Kara doesn’t offer much else on the matter, the air is still light and animated between them. Lena will always be reminded of the first night they met when they interact like this — Kara behind division, cocktail shaker in hand, and Lena dangling her feet from the sticky leather of a barstool. She’ll always remember Kara’s nervous smiles and stammered jokes, how elated she always became the second Lena always came in. For so long, this haunted her. For so long, until even recently, those first days were still tainted with a bitter layer of grit. They still felt tarnished, disingenuous,  _ fake. _

They’re not. They happened.. She can appreciate how they’re no longer there anymore just as much as she can cherish it’s how this all started.

So, maybe Lena is a little nostalgic for how she stays a little longer. Not too late, just another couple drinks, long enough to admire Kara’s decade-practiced grace behind the bar and her easy charm with other guests. She expected their conversation to last on into the night anyway, had basically prepared footnotes and rebuttals for working through this with Kara, but all talk of work is left behind.

She can revel in this rich simplicity, bask in the moment, savor this old dynamic. Just a little more.

xx

“Please tell me what we’re doing here.'

“I can’t. Sorry.”

“But we tell each other everything.”

“Not everything. You still haven’t told me what the hell your secret ingredient is in those enchiladas.”

“If I tell you, can I be let in on the secret?”

“No, but you can tell me anyway if you’d like.”

Kara’s head thumps back against the plaster of the gazebo’s pillar with a groan, a half-drunk pint of beer sloshing dangerously close to its rim in her hand. “Lena, Gayle’s planning something, and the fact that you not only trust her, but you’re on board with it? I’m terrified.”

Lena gives Kara’s forearm a half-hearted squeeze. “I think you’ll survive.”

“Why won’t you tell me?”

“Because you are awful with keeping secrets.”

“Hey, I was pretty good at keeping them from  _ you.” _

Where this once would have been a slap to the face, Lena just snorts on instinct. “Yes, but I’m pretty sure that’s more a comment on how lovesick I was rather than any tribute to any sort of stealth. You really did slip up so many times, all the signs were there. I mean, you should have seen your face in those first few days we met, you had guilt written all over you. You couldn’t lie to save your life. You’re lucky I just assumed you were bad at flirting.”

The realization that this is something they can laugh about now, it threads slowly into Lena’s awareness, pulses just under the surface. It’s just a halfway grasp, Lena only thinks of it at the back of her mind, but it makes her smile to herself all the same.

It’s not something forgotten, no. And just like that isn’t something to be dwelled on anymore, they don’t need to dismiss it either.

“Hm, you’ve got a point. I am great at flirting, so that wouldn’t really add up. Fine, I can’t keep secrets, but you know what? I’m really glad you see how charming I can be now.”

“Stop being an idiot. We’re in public.”

“What are we doing all the way out here, anyway?” Kara glances around them, squinting out into the bright field. “Isn’t this where they host music festivals?”

Lena shrugs. “Gayle rented it out.”

“This venue is like, five acres.”

“You’re close, actually. Four.”

Gayle’s setup doesn’t use even half the expanse of fields, but the party isn’t any less grandiose because of it. There’s an extravagant array of tall tents and white summerhouses, with a gold-rimmed circular bar in the center. Lena’s pretty certain she saw an ice-sculpture of Gayle and Imra somewhere, but there’s too many unrecognizable people around for her to pick out where. If Lena didn’t already know what Gayle was up to, she’d imagine this was already a wedding reception for how crowded and thoroughly furnished this party is. Caterers from the company Kara works for roam with hors d’oeuvres of whiskey-infused cheeses and cuts, fresh oysters brought in from the bay, and rum-glazed prawns over small chips of ceviche. Even the skinny flutes of sparkling wine that they carry around is made from the most unnecessarily expensive variety of Macabeo grapes of northeastern Spain. Even the turnout of guests are all dressed elegant and light under the silky spring sun. The only real thing missing is the actual entertainment itself.

And, well. Gayle and Imra are also missing, but. Soon.

“Lena, I’m really not a fan of surprises.”

“Good thing the surprise isn’t for you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

After another caterer comes in to offer a replacement for Kara’s drink, she accepts with a smile but pushes off from the pillar wall as soon as he’s gone, her tight Oxford shirt twisting around her elbows. 

“Maybe I should go help out. This is weird, having my friends all working and waiting on me. They probably could use an extra—”

Lena drops a hand on her arm again. “Your boss gave you the day off, and you know Gayle has a habit of overcompensating. I’m sure they’re all fine.”

Kara crosses her arms, but she drops the barrage of antsy questions for now, and they continue to lounge in the empty gazebo, just enjoying the warm breeze and the shade. Though they’re tucked away in the back of the venue, further from the open end of the field where Gayle will be presenting her moment, it’s nicer to relax like this. Lena’s not entirely sure who most of the guests Gayle’s invited even are — a strange assortment of National City’s elite and B-list actors that Lena hadn’t believed Gayle when she said she often spent weekends away with them. There are plenty of Imra’s friends too, mostly from Spheerical Industries. Lena already spent enough time browsing through the group to say hello, talk with Jack, and leave the talk of work somewhere behind just for the day. 

It’s light, a day like this. Simple in every way that it’s all so very Gayle. A day like this used to be something Lena dreaded and hated, and now it doesn’t even faze her. It’s not the sort of thing she wants to do every day, but Lena’s slowly learning to not seek out every grim and lousy fault in everything. 

The sunlight frames Kara like a firelit glow as she leans back against the white edge railing, and though her foot still taps in anticipation, Lena thinks that maybe she too is growing into her own skin of peace. It doesn’t look like Lena’s, and Lena doesn’t need to be as familiar with it as Kara is, but it’s there. Something is there.

Not too much time later, Kara nearly finishes her second beer and Lena’s glass is emptied when a round bubble of red emerges from behind the faraway line of trees.

At Lena’s grin, Kara spins around and struggles to see under the glare of the sun, holding a hand up to get a better view. “Is that—”

“A hot air balloon?” Lena shakes her head fondly. “Yes.”

“Is this Gayle’s way of making an entrance? She’s over an hour late to her own party.”

“Just wait.”

A different light aircraft, a single-seater plane soaring even higher above the balloons, loops from over the trees behind them, coming from the opposite direction of the balloon. It slowly begins to emit a thick trail of ivory smoke from its tail, the curves and dips precise as it slowly paints a message across the sky.

“What does that say?” Kara’s brow scrunches as she squints to read it. “Dammit, I miss my glasses.”

“Gayle and Imra are on that balloon. What do you think it says?”

“How would I know?”

“You spent years of your life studying journalism, I really thought you’d have better deductive reasoning than this.”

“I don’t like your tone.”

“Kara, she’s proposing.”

“What? Who?”

“Gayle.”

“To who?”

“Darling, I’m worried about you.”

Kara just continues to vary between blinking owlishly at Lena and screwing up her eyes towards the sky, until, finally: 

“Oh.  _ Oh _ my god, oh, okay, wow. Okay, got it, I just thought—” Kara shakes her head, rolling her shoulders back stiltedly. “Okay, awesome. This is great.”

Lena raises an eyebrow. “You thought what?”

Kara’s bottom lip twitches down in the way it does when she’s nervous, and her laugh implies the same. “I just, I thought— I dunno. I thought you were going to do something.”

“Me?” Lena asks incredulously, a similar high-pitched tick to her voice. “What would I be doing? I’ve been standing with you this entire time.”

“I don’t know! Maybe Gayle was going to bring something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, a car? A house? I don’t know what you’d do. You bought me this eight-hundred dollar tie last week and burned the receipt, you’re capable of anything.”

“Kara. Why would Gayle host a party just for me to give you a car? How on earth would you bring a house somewhere?”

“Okay, I thought  _ you _ were going to ask  _ me _ something.”

The tug of realization that dawns makes Lena’s skin prickle. “Ask you what?”

“Like— for us to move in together, go skydiving, co-adopt Pork Belly or just — something. How would I know?”

“Move in together.”

“Yeah, okay, I know it’s dumb, I’m dumb, you’ve just been so sneaky with Gayle lately and not letting me come over, so I just thought—”

“I was just helping her plan this—”

“—that maybe you were the suspicious one but really it was pretty dumb for me to not immediatley know Gayle—”

“It’s not dumb,” Lena rushes, firmly cutting Kara off. She licks her lips, thirsty again for a stiff drink. “I-It’s definitely a conversation I want to have. With you.”

“Oh, good, I was worried you meant with Alex.”

“You so haven’t earned the right to be a brat right now.”

“Right, sorry, I know that’s your job.”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that for your sake.” Lena takes a stabling breath, working her thoughts again like wringing out a thick towel. “But, for the record, we can talk about it. Just… maybe later, if that’s alright?”

The nerves finally ebbing away, Kara chuckles off her restlessness and this ridiculous conversation. “Yeah, yeah, that’s more than alright.” She steps forward to press a slow, wanting kiss to Lena’s mouth, her lips warm and still lingering with the tingling taste of beer. A simple kiss like that, Lena still gets lost finding her way back to the ground when Kara pulls away.

The blonde’s gaze turns to focus on the laughing couple picking their way out of the hot air balloon before the throng of the clapping crowd. 

“They are pretty sweet together. I don’t know why I didn’t get it sooner.” 

Lena follows her line of sight, and though Imra looks ten types of mortified irritation with Gayle’s flamboyant display, she looks equally smitten and adoring of the woman whose arms she’s in.

Lena glances back to Kara, to her sweet-cream smile and the cool gloss of her eyes. 

“I hope you’re not getting any ideas.”

“‘Course not,” Kara laughs as she claps along. “I’ll have the common sense to do it in private, don’t worry.”

At the certainty in her tone, that firm future tense, Lena sharply catches Kara’s eye again, but Kara just continues to smile like the light through an early morning rainshower: raw dew, gentle crystal, an old beginning.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Sure, but what does that make you, though? For someone who’s gonna say yes to this idiot?”

“Oh my god.” Lena closes her eyes as her neck burns like charcoal, and she slaps Kara on her side. “Please stop.”=

“What? Can’t I talk about how pretty you’ll look on our wedding day?”

“No — you — can —  _ not,” _ Lena hisses, accentuating each word with a bratty slap, each of which Kara takes in laughing stride as Lena’s face only chars hotter. 

Kara wraps an around Lena’s waist from behind when Lena finally stops, pressing a kiss to her temple close to her ear. “I told you I’m good at flirting.” 

Lena resists the urge to elbow her. “And I told you I’m breaking up with you.”

“You’ve been saying that for two months.”

“And I will keep saying it until—”

“I propose?”

Lena spins in her arm, a harsh finger jabbing to Kara’s collarbone. “Say that word again and we’re never moving in together.”

“Okay, okay.” Kara rolls her eyes affectionately, urging Lena to relax back against her, and she does after a pointed glare. 

And Kara ruins the moment again, of course. She wouldn’t know how to do anything else. 

“I’ll save the P-word for after we move in together, then?”

Lena elbows her in the ribs.

xx

“Not that I’m telling you to hurry up or anything,” Kara calls from the living room, her voice slipping between the crack of the partially open bedroom door, “but I would like to encourage you to check out the time. Just, when you feel like getting around to it. If you get bored or anything.”

Lena’s hair still hangs unruly along her shoulders, barely tamed curls and curves, and the straightening iron on the vanity desk has long since given a soft ping to indicate it’s ready. 

She makes no move for it though, instead sitting glued to the duvet at the foot of the bed. A tattered sheet of paper rests still in her hands, hardly there at all, an envelope discarded at her side.

“Okay, I might be telling you to hurry up.”

_ Open if you forgive me. _

Is it terrible of her that she’d forgotten all about this?

The letter had found its way into the pocket of the same light jacket she wore all those months ago, one she apparently hadn’t dug out again until now. When the weather was addictive and light, a second warm skin, and this has always been her favorite thing to wear this time of year.

Lena sits still at the foot of her bed, letter in hand, unmoving. 

“I know you think I’m Ruby’s favorite and all — which, okay, there could definitely be some substance to that — but she still always blames me when we’re late.”

Lena brushes her finger along the shadowy imprint of words through the folded page, the indents of a passage she’s yet to read. “You can tell her it’s my fault,” she calls back with just as much cool ease to her tone, though her eyes never leave the letter.

Kara’s disbelieving laugh dances along the hallway, sings into the room. “She knows. Pretty sure that’s exactly why she blames me, says I should be keeping you on a tighter leash.”

Lena smiles, the stream of daylight fanning across the room, catching the timeworn page in a warm glow. 

There are no demons here, not a tally to keep.

“Alright, relax, I’m coming,” she finally shouts back with a laugh, flipping the switch for the iron off and scooping her purse from the chair. She’ll just leave her hair as is. 

Kara’s slumped against the front door in an exaggerated flare of exasperation, groaning like she’s on the brink of death. Lena slaps her arm and scolds her all the way out the door, their bickering continuing for long after they’ve stepped onto the elevator, and together, they leave.

Behind, dropped in the recycling bin and still catching one last sliver of the golden afternoon light, the letter stays.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> farewell for now

**Author's Note:**

> comments are my main source of protein, thank u
> 
> i'm @harrowanthe on twitter hmu


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